
CHARLES LAMB 

After a drawing by Robert Hancock in the National Portrait Gallery 








ESSAYS OF 
CHARLES LAMB 




Selected and Edited 
With Introduction and Notes 

BY 

GEORGE ARMSTRONG WAUCHOPE, M.A., Ph.D 

Professor of English in South Carolina College 





Boston, U.S.A., and London 
GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 

1904 





^^f' 



-h^ 




LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two OoDies Received 

MAY 10 1904 

'^ CoDyrtffht Entry 
OLASS «- XXo. No. 
COPY B\ 



V 



Entered at Stationers' Hall 



Copyright, 1904, by 
GEORGE ARMSTRONG WAUCHOPE 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



/ s'^^ 



/f^ 



TO 
MY BELOVED COLLEAGUE AND REVERED FRIEND 

CRITIC, LOVER, AND MASTER OF OUR MOTHER TONGUE 

THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED 

AS 

A TOKEN OF GRATITUDE AND RESPECT 



p t ^ I ' y 



< . 1 , 



PREFACE 



The assertion of a number of eminent critics that English 
prose style reaches its climax in Charles Lamb has remained 
undisputed. If this high praise is deserved, Lamb should be 
regarded as one of our purest classics, and a subject for general 
academic study. It is, therefore, all the more a matter of 
surprise that no adequate school edition of Elia has hitherto 
appeared. I believe, in fact, that he has been neglected in 
the class room, but for what specific reasons, whether of subject 
or treatment, I am not prepared to say. The condition is 
truly remarkable in the case of one sq universally beloved and 
by acclamation adjudged a supreme master of English. 

I believe that Lamb is shortly coming into his own. Many 
signs of the times point in this direction. The aim of the 
present volume is to supply a substantial school and college 
edition of selected essays. Recognizing the numerous difficul- 
ties to be met, the editor has tried to make a book which shall 
prove adequate to the requirements of the class room. Not 
to infringe upon the rights of the teacher, the beautiful and 
pathetic story of Lamb's life has been left untold, and only a 
few suggestions as to methods of study have been made. To 
avoid similar sins against the student, the plan of not giving 
information that is easily accessible has been adhered to. The 
right of personal research — a wholesome stimulus to interest 
— is respected in this edition, but help is offered where help 
is needed. In criticism, analyses of style and structure, and 
in notes on recondite allusions, the book will, I believe, be 
found reasonably full. 



vi PREFACE 

After carefully collating four standard English editions of 
the Essays of Elia, the editor has followed closely the excel- 
lent text of Mr. Richard Heme Shepherd (London : Chatto 
and Windus, 1898), which has the advantage of being based 
directly on the text of the two volumes of 1823 and 1833, 
issued under Lamb's own eye. The spelling and the use of 
points and capitals is, therefore, substantially that approved 
by the author. Several passages which Lamb suppressed have 
been restored from the magazines in which the essays originally 
appeared, as the personal reasons that caused their omission 
now no longer exist. It has seemed best to retain Lamb's own 
notes on the text as footnotes. The miscellaneous critical 
papers are reprinted in the form in which they first appeared 
in the several magazines. 

The section on works of reference, and specific acknowledg- 
ments in the Introduction and Notes, will sufficiently indicate 
the indebtedness of the editor, which is too multifarious to be 
here set down. A number of Lamb's allusions and quotations 
have defied all attempts of the editor to trace them, and any 
information throwing hght on such passages will be gratefully 

appreciated. 

G. A. W. 
Columbia, S. C. 

February, 1904 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION 

I. Chief Events of Lamb's Life . 
II. Lamb's Personality and Influence 

III. Style and Matter of the Essays 

IV. Library References . . . . 



PAGE 

ix 

xi 

. xxiv 

xxxiv 



ESSAYS OF ELIA 



V 



Whist 



I. A Character of the Late Elia 
II. The South-Sea House 

III. Oxford in the Vacation 

IV. Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years 
V. The Two Races of Men 

VI. New Year's Eve . 
VII. Mrs. Battle's Opinions on 
VIII. Valentine's Day . 
IX. A Quakers' Meeting . 
X. My Relations 
XL Mackery End, in Hertfordshire 
XII. Imperfect Sympathies .... 

XIII. The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple 

XIV. Witches and Other Night-Fears . 
X^. Grace before Meat 

/XVI. Dream-Children : A Reverie . 
XVII. On Some of the Old Actors . 
XVIII. The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers . 
XIX. A Dissertation upon Roast Pig 
XX. On the Acting of Munden 

XXI. Munden's Farewell 

vii 



Ago 



I 
6 

15 

23 
38 
44 
52 
60 

63 
69 

76 
82 

91 
104 

III 

119 

123 

137 
145 

153 

156 



Vlll 



CONTENTS 



LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA 



f 












PAGE 


yr-xxii. 


Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading . i6o 


*jt XXIII. 


Old China 


1 68 


XXIV. 


Poor Relations 










174 


XXV. 


The Old Margate Hoy . 










182 


XXVI. 


Blakesmoor in H shire 










191 


XXVII. 


Captain Jackson 










197 


XXVIII. 


Barbara S . 










201 


XXIX. 


The Superannuated Man 




• 






207 


XXX. 


Sanity of True Genius . 










216 


XXXI. 


To the Shade of Elliston . 










220 


XXXII. 


Ellistoniana .... 










223 


XXXIII. 


Newspapers Thirty-Five Years Ago 






229 



CRITICAL ESSAYS 



XXXIV. On the Tragedies of Shakespeare . , . 237 
XXXV. Notes on the Elizabethan and other Drama- 
tists ..,.:.... 258 
XXXVI. On the Genius and Character of Hogarth . 289 
XXXVII. On the Poetical Works of George Wither . 312 

NOTES 319 

INDEX , 403 



INTRODUCTION 

I. CHIEF EVENTS OF LAMB'S LIFE 

{Arranged chronologically) 

177 S February lo, born in Crown-office Row, Temple, London. 

1 78 1 Pupil in William Bird's school in Fetter Lane. 

1 782-1 789 October, enters Christ's Hospital; schoolmates are 
Leigh Hunt and Coleridge ; becomes Deputy Grecian 
under Rev. James Boyer ; vacations spent at Blakesware 
in Hertfordshire. 

1789? Receives clerkship in the South-Sea House; love affair 
with Ann Simmons (i 789-1 795). 

1792 April 5, appointed clerk in the East India House; meet- 
ings with Coleridge at the " Salutation and Cat " Tavern ; 
sees Mrs. Siddons. 

1 795-1 796 Takes lodgings in Little Queen Street, Holborn ; 
meets Robert Southey ; spends six weeks in madhouse 
at Hoxton. 

1796 Lamb's sonnets published with Coleridge's poems ; Sep- 

tember, Mary Lamb kills her mother and is confined 
in madhouse. 

1 797 Charles and Mary begin their " life of dual loneliness " ; 

visits to Southey in Hampshire and to Coleridge at Nether 
Stowey. 

1798 Publication of A Tale of Rosamund Gray and The Old 

Familiar Faces. 

1799 Meets Godwin and Manning ; revisits Hertfordshire. 

1800 Removes with Mary to Chapel Street, Pentonville, where they 

are "shunned and marked" ; affair with Hester Savary; 
removes to No. 16 Mitre Court Buildings in the Temple ; 
visits from and to Coleridge ; meets the Wordsworths. 

ix 



X INTRODUCTION 

1 800-1 803 Contributor to the Mortimg Post, A Ibiojt, and Morning 

Chronicle. 
1802 Publication of John Woodvil, Frag?nents of Burton, and 

Ballads. 

1805 Mary in asylum a month ; Lamb writes Farewell to Tobacco. 

1806 Lamb's farce, Mr. H., fails at Drury Lane Theater ; begins 

to give Wednesday-night parties. 

1807 Tales fro7n Shakespeare published jointly by Charles and 

Mary. 

1808 Adve?ittires of Ulysses and Speci7nens of English Dramatic 

Poets published. 

1809 Takes lodgings at 34 Southampton Buildings, Chancery 

Lane, thence to chambers No. 4, Inner Temple Lane ; 
Wednesday-night parties flourish ; joint publication of 
Mrs. Leicester'' s School and Poetry for Children. 

1 810 Visit to Hazlitt at Winterslow ; visit to Oxford ; Mary in 

asylum. 

18 1 1 Publication of essays on The Genius and Character of 

Hogarth and The Tragedies of Shakespeare in the 
Reflector J Gifford attacks Lamb in the Quarterly 
Review. 
181 5 Meets Talfourd ; visit from Wordsworth; Mary in asylum 
ten weeks. 

18 17 Takes lodgings in Great Russell Street, Covent Garden; 

meets the actors Munden, Elliston, and Miss Kelly, 

181 8 Publication of Lamb's Complete Works in two volumes 

(Chas. Oilier). 

1822 Death of John Lamb; trip to Paris ; writes Confessions of 

a Drtmkard. 

1 823 The Essays of Elia, published by Taylor and Hessey ; 

controversy with Southey ; removes to a cottage in Cole- 
brook Row, Islington ; writes A Character of the Late 
Elia. By a Friend, and seven essays for the Londo7i. 
1825 March, Lamb retired on pension of ^450 a year by the 
directors of the India House ; writes four essays for the 
London, a hoax Me7noir of Liston, Horns, and Letter to 
an Old Gejitlejjtan. 



INTRODUCTION xi 

1826 Writes for the New Monthly Magazine j writes The Con- 

fidant^ a farce. 

1827 Mary ill in asylum ; removes to Chaseside, Enfield. 

1828 Contributes Popular Fallacies to the New Monthly. 

1829 Lodges at the Westwoods' ; the stagecoach incident ; Mary 

ill. 

1830 Moxon publishes Lamb's Albu7>i Verses j Lamb removes 

for a short while to London, then returns to Enfield ; 
Mary's illness increases. 

1 83 1 Contributes Peter'^s Net to the Englishman'' s Magazine. 

1833 Lodges with Walden at Bay Cottage, Edmonton ; Mary 

very ill and Charles' health poor ; Moxon publishes the 
Last Essays of Elia. 

1834 Death of Coleridge; death of Lamb, December 27, and 

burial at Edmonton. 
1847 May 20, Mary dies in private asylum. 



11. LAMB'S PERSONALITY AND INFLUENCE 

De Quincey has remarked that in order to appreciate Lamb 
it is necessary to understand his character and temperament.^ 
A knowledge of the man, his likes and dislikes, his whims, 
caprices, and fancies, is in fact the master key which alone 
will unlock the treasures of his writings. Charles Lamb was a 
most paradoxical character, and his personality is projected to 
a remarkable extent into all his literary work. The correct \ 
interpretation, therefore, of any particular passage may depend 
upon our insight into the peculiar bias of the writer's mind. 
The coy and wayward Elia should, of all essayists, be approached 
in a friendly and unprejudiced spirit. Recognizing this impor- 
tant personal equation, therefore, the student of Lamb should 
not lose sight of the unconscious reaction of his character and 
life on his work, and should set himself the pleasant task of 

1 De Quincey's Works, Vol. Ill, p. 53, Masson ed. 



Xll INTRODUCTION 

discovering and tracing out some of these hidden undercurrents 
of influence. 

Lamb's most obvious trait was his artistic temperament, and 
a recognition of this fact by the student at the outset is funda- 
mental. There was a touch of the bohemian in him which 
revealed itself in his tastes and habits. He showed a good- 
humored contempt for modern affectations and conventionali- 
ties, and cultivated the old-fashioned in speech and bearing. 
He was a lover of streets and shops, of libraries and theaters, 
of rare prints and first editions, of the cheerful glass and a 
rubber at whist. A scorner of the commonplace, he was an 
uncompromising enemy of Philistinism with its cant, self-satis- 
faction, and materialism. It is not strange that a man thus 
constituted should have created a style unique in literature, 
and made it an instrument adequate to the expression of his 
quaint and nimble mind. 

As a balance to the artist in Lamb was a fine judicial poise of 
intellect. This wholesome quality saved him from the excesses 
of youthful enthusiasm. Like his friend Hazlitt, he was ever 
a seeker of essential truth. With the courage and confidence 
of a true philosopher, he retried all questions at the bar of 
his own reason, and rendered fresh verdicts based on justice, 
conservatism, and sympathy with the best in human nature. 

Another quality inherent in Lamb was his magnanimity, along 
with its counterpart, modesty. He is egotistical, but with the 
gentle self-assertion which is fully justified by the worth and 
interest of his ideas. He never, however, takes himself or his 
views too seriously, and his very egotism is, like Falstaif's lying, 
felt to be merely a genial affectation of manner assumed for 
the double purpose of amusing himself and the reader. 

Lamb was not lacking, as some have supposed, in the stuff 
of true manly courage. Many have been misled by the tender 
epithets of "frolic" and "gentle-hearted," given him by 
his friends, or by his own playful self-confessions, and have 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

ill-ad visedly judged him weak, frivolous, and timid. He was, on 
the contrary, strong to suffer and endure. One need take 
only a cursory survey of his career to find such evidences of his 
fortitude in the face of petty annoyances and appalling misfor- 
tunes as should place him on the roll of the heroes of humble 
life. His exasperating impediment of speech, his bitter dis- 
appointment at being debarred from any congenial profession, 
the dreadful taint of insanity in his blood, his sister's madness 
with its tragic sequel and his voluntary self-sacrifice as her 
guardian, the constant vexations of business Hfe, and the never- 
ending pinch of poverty and ill health, — all this was enough 
to excuse Lamb had he been the most morbid and fretful of 
men. On the contrary, his troubles served but to mellow a 
rarely sweet and happy disposition and rendered him more 
unselfish and benevolent. Since death removed the sacred 
veil of domestic sorrow, the world has known what caused the 
pathetic sadness in those eyes which were wont to twinkle with 
the most tricksy merriment. 

It is equally true that Lamb possessed many so-called 
feminine traits. This bisexual nature, as Furnivall calls it in 
Shakespeare, is one of the most attractive characteristics of 
his imaginative mind. The bravest souls are the most tender. 
Mary Lamb was noted for her directness and common sense. 
In her brother, however, there was the suggestion of posing, 
an incorrigible fondness for make-believe, a mischievous play- 
ing with life which was delightful when one realized his rever- 
ence for its serious aspects. His favorite attitude to the reader 
is that of one chatting familiarly with a companion. Not even 
in his open letter to Southey in the famous controversy did he 
assume the air of the slashing critics of the day, and abuse or 
browbeat his opponent. His essays, though more polished than 
hir> letters, move in a plane scarcely more elevated than the 
epistolary. " They are all carefully elaborated," says Talfourd, 
"yet never were works written in a higher defiance to the 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

conventional pomp of Style." Even when Lamb is argmi^en- 
tative he is never dogmatic. His purpose is not to demolish 
the position of an imaginary antagonist, but to win a friend's 
approving nod or foil the smile of incredulity. He rarely 
makes a categorical assertion of some matter of opinion except 
it be half in jest, and his whole bearing is persuasive and 
winning. He aims to entertain, not to arouse debate. 

The Essays of Elia, being candidly personal in atmosphere 
and structure, contain a vast deal of autobiographical material. 
"In his various essays," says Nicoll, "he has left a faithful 
and true portrait of himself, with all of his out-of-the-way 
humour and opinions ; and irresistibly attractive the portrait 
is." ^ What Lamb says of himself, however, should be accepted 
guardedly. He had, in Ainger's happy phrase, "a turn for 
the opposite." One cannot read too warily, for example, 
the sketch of his own character in his inimitable A Character 
of the Late Elia. By a Friend. There a charming and par- 
donable egotism is masked under a veil of self-depreciation. 
One must be circumspect indeed not to be entrapped by a man 
who can thus gravely preach his own funeral discourse. 

Lamb was incorrigibly fond of hoaxing, mystification, and 
practical joking. He valued himself, in fact, on being "a 
matter-of-lie-man," beheving truth to be too precious to be 
wasted upon everybody. His lying Me7noir of Liston is a clever 
mock biography, which the public, misled by its jumble of fact 
and fiction, took seriously — to the immense amusement of the 
author. Nothing of the sort had been so successful since 
the appearance of Gulliver's Travels.^ When the authorship of 
the Waverley Novels was a general subject of conjecture. Lamb 
told George Dyer in strictest confidence that they were the 
work of Lord Castlereagh, whereupon his innocent schoolmate 
hurried away to whisper it in the ear of Leigh Hunt, " who as 

1 Nicoll's Landmarks of English Literature, p. 368. 

2 See Letter to Miss Hittchinson, January 20, 1825. 



INTRODUCTION XV 

a public writer ought to hear the latest news." ^ When Man- 
ning was about to return home from China after several years' 
absence, Lamb wrote a letter in which he tells him "not to 
expect to see the same England again which you left ; few of 
your old friends will remember you; " ^ then mentioning the 
deaths of Mary, Coleridge, and Wordsworth, he adds that he 
himself is now in an asylum. The next day he wrote another 
letter correcting these dismal statements and mailed it to St. 
Helena to meet his friend on the way home. The spirit which 
prompted such pleasantries with intimate friends comes out in 
the essays in curious perversions of fact which serve the author's 
purpose of puzzling or shocking his readers. 

Lamb showed his contemporaries how to combine business 
with culture. His example of industry, prudence, and inde- 
pendence was a wholesome one in an age when men of letters 
were notoriously visionary and unpractical. As a clerk he 
paid the most careful attention to business. So far as is 
known, no complaint was ever made of his being negligent 
in the performance of his duties, and his employers showed 
their appreciation of his services by granting him many leaves 
of absence, and finally retiring him on a handsome pension. 
He was at his desk in the India House punctually at ten and 
remained till four o'clock daily. He then returned to his 
rooms and dined with his sister at half-past four, after which 
he was in the habit of taking a long walk for exercise. 

Lamb was essentially a town man, and was never quite at 
home off the streets of London. His essays picture the delights 
of city life much as Wordsworth's poems reveal the charms of 
country life. He confessed that he was " not romance-bit 
about nature," but felt "as airy up four pair of stairs as in the 
country." He was one "that loved to be at home in crowds." 

1 Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, Chap. IX, p. 359. 

2 See "Letter to Richard Manning," December 25, 181 5, Talfourd 
ed., p. 268. 



XVI INTRODUCTION 

" Separate from the pleasure of your company," he wrote to 
Wordsworth, " I don't much care if I never see a mountain in 
my Hfe. I have passed all my days in London, until I have 
formed as many and intense local attachments, as any of you 
mountaineers can have done with dead nature. . . . The 
wonder of these sights impels me into night walks about her 
crowded streets, and I often shed tears in the motley Strand 
from fullness of joy at so much life. All these emotions must 
be strange to you; so are your rural emotions to me."-"- 

With his high-strung nature, Lamb had his periods of depres- 
sion as well as elation. His health was not uniformly good ; 
he was a great sufferer from nervousness and headaches, which 
were aggravated by office confinement, late hours, and impru- 
dent diet. His low spirits show themselves less in the essays 
than in his letters, in writing which he solaced many dreary 
hours in the intervals of business. At times he felt himself 
hopelessly condemned to " the drudgery of the desk's dead 
wood," while opportunity for the employment of his literary 
tastes and talents continually receded. The burden of some 
of his letters is that he sadly lacked leisure, he was bothered 
by visitors whom he called " friendly harpies," he was so 
"smoky with last night's ten pipes" that he must leave off 
writing, and he was extra-worked auditing warehousekeepers' 
accounts in. his "candlelight fog-den at Leadenhall." "My 
theory," said he to Wordsworth gloomily, "is to enjoy life but 
my practice is against it." 

In arriving at a fair estimate of Lamb, we must take also 
into account the fact that he was disappointed in his early 
literary ambitions. He grew restless in the monotonous tread- 
mill of daily toil; yet this very drudgery saved him from a 
garret in Grub Street or the humiliating necessity of seeking 
a patron. Intellectual defeat was yet harder to bear. How 
bitter must have been his sense of failure as he successively 
1" Letter to Wordsworth," January 30, 1801. 
% 



INTRODUCTION XVll 

abandoned hope of winning renown in the alluring fields of 
poetry, fiction, the drama, and journahsm. His mother's 
murder shattered his poetic aspirations; his adherence to an 
unhealthy and decadent school of romance proved disastrous 
to Rosamund Gray ; the flimsy plots of John Woodvil and 

Mr. H caused the first to fail of acceptance and the 

latter to be hissed from the stage ; and on account of his 
ignorance of politics combined with the impossible demands 
of the daily humorous paragraph, three party journals dispensed 
with his services. 

His correspondence was the single field of literary activity 
which he found well suited to his peculiar bent. The com- 
position of his letters, many of which were future essays in 
the rough, was good preparation for the more pretentious 
work of Elia in the Lo7idon. All this early groping after a 
career in letters, however, unsatisfactory though it was, did 
serve as an indispensable training in style. Each effort con- 
tributed something to the formation of the wonderful whole : 
the verses refined his sense of rhythm and diction ; the 
journalism expanded his power of humorous observation ; the 
dramas sharpened his turn for dialogue and witty expression ; 
the stories developed his skill in narration and analysis of 
character- and the letters furnished that friendly attitude to 
the reader which every one finds so attractive, and suggested 
an interesting class of subjects. 

The influence of Lamb upon the literary life of his own time 
should not be overlooked. His Wednesday-evening parties are 
famous to this day. Next to the gatherings at the Holland 
House, those at Lamb's were the most interesting in London, 
The assemblages of distinguished men in the luxurious parlors 
of the noble lord were more briUiant and imposing ; but the 
men who met in the humble but hospitable chambers of 
Charles and Mary Lamb, and partook of their simple teas, 
contributed more to the intellectual life of the metropoHs 



XVlll INTRODUCTION 

and preserved the traditions of good comradeship associated 
with Raleigh's Club at the Mermaid and Dr. Johnson's at 
the Turk's Head. If there was more of politics at the earl's, 
there was more of literature at the clerk's. The company 
that met at Lamb's was not only homogeneous in spirit but 
was fairly representative of London life. Among the regular 
guests were Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, Lloyd, Godwin, " Barry 
Cornwall," Robinson, Field, Dyer, Barnes, the editor of the 
Times, Admiral Burney, and the actors Liston and Charles. 
Kemble. Occasionally Wordsworth, De Quincey, and Cole- 
ridge were present when they happened to be in town. 
Lamb's house was indeed a fountain head from which flowed 
a stream of criticism of art, literature, philosophy, religion, 
politics, and the stage, that fertilized the mind of young 
England to an extent of which the agents themselves were 
only half conscious. 

In all that assemblage of gifted men it is no derogation to 
the visitors to say that their host was the most remarkable. 
Hood, Crossley, Procter, Patmore, and all who knew him, 
agree substantially as to his appearance. Talfourd has left us 
perhaps the best pen sketch of Lamb. " Methinks I see him 
before me now," he writes, "as he appeared then. ... A 
light frame, so fragile that it seemed as if a breath would 
overthrow it, clad in clerk-like black, was surmounted by a 
head of form and expression the most noble and sweet. His 
black hair curled crisply about an expanded forehead ; his 
eyes, softly brown, twinkled with varying expression, though 
the prevalent feeling was sad. . . . Who shall describe his 
countenance, catch its quivering sweetness, and fix it forever 
in words? Deep thought, striving with humour; the lines of 
suffering wreathed in cordial mirth ; and his smile of painful 
sweetness, present an image to the mind it can as little describe ■ 
as lose. His personal appearance and manner are not unfitly 
characterized by what he himself says in one of his letters to .| 
% 



INTRODUCTION xix 

Manning, of Braham, ' a compound of the Jew, the gentleman, 
and the angel.' "^ 

In the home where Mary Lamb presided there was plain 
living and high thinking. The flow of soul, however, was 
not absent from this feast of reason. We turn again to 
Talfourd's delightful pen for this picture of one of the suppers. 
" Meanwhile Becky lays the cloth on the side-table, under the 
direction of the most quiet, sensible and kind of women, who 
soon compels the younger and more hungry of the guests to 
partake largely of the cold roast lamb or boiled beef, the 
heaps of smoking roasted potatoes, and the vast jug of porter. 
Perfect freedom prevails. ... As the hot water and its 
accompaniments appear, and the severities of whist relax, the 
light of conversation thickens. Lamb stammers out puns 
suggestive of wisdom for happy Barron Field to admire and 
echo ; the various driblets of talk combine into a stream, while 
Miss Lamb moves gently about to see that each modest 
stranger is duly served."^ 

Lamb was a man of strong appetite, over which he sometimes 
failed to exercise due restraint. His sister often wrote of his 
being " smoky and drinky." He was, like Chaucer's franklin, 
Epicurus' true son. His taste for pastries, roast pig, partridge, 
hare, and shoulder of mutton is evident from numerous allusions 
in his letters and essays. Taste is the sense least often appealed 
to by writers, but Lamb has succeeded in making some excel- 
lent literature out of the pleasures of the palate. Perhaps he 
thought it equally clever and far kinder to make the mouths 
of his readers water than their eyes. Whatever may have been 
his artistic or ethical motive, Elia's Roast Pig, Chimney- 
Sweepers, Chrisfs Hospital, Grace before Meat, and other 
savory papers, form a body of succulent literature which is 
little short of an apotheosis of the appetite. 

1 Talfourd's Letters of Charles Lamb, Chap. X, p. 257. 

2 Final Memorials, pp. 348, 349. 



XX INTRODUCTION 

Elia was also addicted to the pipe and preferred the strong- 
est varieties of " the great plant." He began the use of 
tobacco as a substitute for strong drinks, but the counter- 
attraction soon became a new form of slavery. In one of his 
moods of reformation he abjured the fragrant weed and wrote 
his lyric Farewell to Tobacco. Unhappily this proved but the 
first of a series of adieux to his "friendly traitress." On one 
occasion Doctor Parr, who smoked the mildest tobacco in 
a pipe half filled with salt, saw Lamb puffing furiously at a 
pipe crammed with the strongest mixture, and asked him 
how he had acquired the power of smoking at such a rate. 
Lamb replied, " I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil after 
virtue." 

It cannot be denied that Lamb's most serious frailty was 
his habit of partaking too freely of alcoholic stimulants. He 
inherited a constitution which craved intoxicants, and this 
strengthened the temptation. In ales, wines, gin-and-water, 
he found temporary relief from bashfulness, low spirits, and 
the cares and sorrows of existence. A further effect was that 
they enabled him partly to overcome his stammering and to 
throw off the consciousness of other personal oddities. His 
system was so sensitive to their effects that a single glass 
sufficed to start the marvelous flow of wit and fancy. "It 
created nothing," says Patmore, "but it was the talisman that 
not only unlocked the poor casket in which the rich thoughts of 
Charles Lamb were shut up, but set in motion their machinery 
in the absence of which they would have lain like gems in the 
mountain or gold in the mine."^ 

The same agent must be held responsible for the reckless 
buffoonery with which he sometimes entertained his company, 
and also the moods of perversity during which he made life a 
burden for the uncongenial. At such times he took delight in 
shocking strangers and confirming any unfavorable impression 
1 Barry Cornwall's Charles Lamb: A Memoir, p. 57. 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

by assuming an attitude of mockery or frivolity.^ This explains 
the impression left on Macready and Carlyle. The great actor 
records with disgust " one odd saying of Lamb's that the last 
breath he drew in he wished might be through a pipe and 
exhaled in a pun." One can also readily see why Elia 
appeared to the stern Scotch seer " a sorry phenomenon," and 
his talk " contemptibly small and a ghastly make-believe of 
wit."^ Lamb, however, lavished such a wealth of affection 
and pathetic tenderness on his sister and such a store of gen- 
erosity and good comradeship on his friends, and kept his 
writings so free from all unpleasing notes, that his readers are 
only too willing to condone his shortcomings. 

Of all Lamb's friendships that with Coleridge was the 
strongest and mutually the most helpful. Beginning at the 
Blue Coat School, it ripened as the years passed, and ended 
only with the death of the poet. It is one of the most beauti- 
ful in literary history. Coleridge encouraged Lamb to follow 
literature as an avocation, and published the first work of his 
friend with his own. . Lamb amply returned the favor by giving 
Coleridge the benefit of his fine powers of criticism. The 
appreciation of the latter is evident in a letter written to 
Cottle in 1797, in which he says, "I much wish to send my 
* Visions of the Maid of Ara' and my corrections to Words- 
worth, who lives not above twenty miles from me, and to Lamb, 
whose taste and judgment I see reason to think more correct 
and philosophical than my own, which yet I place pretty 
high."^ 

After the fatal tragedy in 1796, Coleridge was the one friend 
to whom Lamb poured out all the anguish of his heart. 
"White, or some of my friends," he wrote, "or the public 
papers by this time may have ' informed you of the terrible 

1 See Hayden's Atitobiography and Journals, p. 216. • 

2 Carlyle's Reminiscences, p. 310. 

^ Campbell's Life of Coleridge, p. xxxii. See also pp. 538 seq. 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

calamities that have fallen on our family. I will only give you 
the outlines : My poor, dear, dearest sister, in a fit of insanity, 
has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only 
time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at 
present in a madhouse, from which I fear she must be moved 
to an hospital. . . . My poor father was sHghtly wounded, and 
I am left to take care of him and my aunt. Mr. Norris, of the 
Blue Coat School, has been very kind to us, and we have no 
other friend ; but, thank God, I am very calm and composed, 
and able to do the best that remains to do. . . . God Almighty 
have us well in his keeping!" In a later letter he tells of 
Mary's recovery and of her most affectionate and tender 
concern for what had happened. 

The story of the "life of dual loneliness" and mutual 
devotion which the brother and sister led from this time until 
the death of Charles has hardly its parallel in fact or fiction. 
The guardianship of Mary was at once cheerfully assumed by 
Charles, who cared for the unfortunate woman henceforth with 
the most unselfish affection. Wherever they went they soon 
became "marked people," and were subjected to such petty 
annoyances and persecutions that they were obliged repeat- 
edly to change their lodgings. At irregular intervals Mary 
suffered recurrences of her malady, which ever hung over them 
with its fearful shadow. Even when they ventured to indulge 
in a short excursion during Lamb's vacation, Mary took the 
precaution to have a strait-waistcoat carefully packed in their 
luggage. At last these seizures became so frequent and 
uncertain that they gave up their holiday trips. " Miss Lamb 
experienced," says Talfourd, " and full well understood, pre- 
monitory symptoms of the attack, in restlessness, low fever, 
and the inabiUty to sleep ; and, as gently as possible, prepared 
her brother for the duty he must soon perform ; and thus, 
unless he could stave off the terrible separation till Sunday, 
obliged him to ask leave of absence from the office as if for 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

a day's pleasure — a bitter mockery ! On one occasion 
Mr. Charles Lloyd met them slowly pacing together a Httle 
footpath in Hoxton fields, both weeping bitterly, and found, 
on joining them, that they were taking their solemn way to 
the accustomed asylum."^ 

Mary, who was ten years older than Charles, became on her 
part the benefactress and guardian angel of his humble home, 
and looked after his comfort with tender solicitude. All who 
knew her admired her taste, tact, and good sense ; and, being 
herself gifted with no ordinary literary talents, she was able 
not only to preside as a gracious hostess at the Wednesday 
parties, but also to be her brother's helpful companion and 
inspiring collaborator. Something of the love and reverence 
which Charles Lamb felt for this noble woman may be read 
between the lines of a letter written to Dorothy Wordsworth 
in 1805. "I have every reason to suppose," he wrote, "that 
this illness, like all Mary's former ones, will be but tempo- 
rary. But I cannot always feel so. Meantime she is dead 
to me, and I miss a prop. All my strength is gone, and I 
am like a fool, bereft of her cooperation. I dare not think, 
lest I should think wrong ; so used am I to look up to her 
in the least and the biggest perplexity. To say all that I 
know of her would be more than I think anybody could 
believe or even understand ; . . • She is older and wiser, 
and better than me, and all my wretched imperfections I cover 
to myself by resolutely thinking on her goodness. She would 
share hfe and death, heaven and hell with me. She lives but 
for me."^ 

"Rich indeed in moral instruction," says De Quincey, "was 
the hfe of Charles Lamb : and perhaps in one chief result it 
offers to the thoughtful observer a lesson of consolation that 
is awful, and of hope that ought to be immortal, viz., in the 

1 Final Memorials, pp. 1 31-132 (October 3, 1796). 

2 Works of Charles Lamb, Vol. I, pp. 201-202, Talfourd ed. 



XXIV INTRODUCTION 

record which it furnishes that by meekness of submission, and 
by earnest conflict with evil in the spirit of cheerfulness, it is 
possible ultimately to disarm or to blunt the very heaviest of 
curses — even the curse of lunacy." ^ 



III. STYLE AND MATTER OF THE ESSAYS 

Lamb's style is as unique and paradoxical as his personality. 
It possesses the amiable humor, the well-bred tone, the tender 
pathos, and the airy fancy which made the man so attractive. 
All that was weak, perverse, boisterous, or discourteous has 
evaporated in the processes of composition ; while his genial 
egotism, perfect humanity, piquant philosophy, the essential 
sweetness and light of his nature, remain crystallized. Ernest 
Rhys mentions admiringly " the many fine and rare graces to 
be found in Elia : the art, the fantasy, the charm of style, the 
exquisite sense of words, the temperamental faculty for litera- 
ture at its highest and choicest attainment."^ Saintsbury pro- 
nounces him " the most exquisite and singular, though the 
least prolific, of the literary geniuses " ^ whom the London 
boasted during its brief but brilliant career. To say the least. 
Lamb has by general consent made an exceedingly interest- 
ing and original contribution to English prose. His style is 
eclectic in spirit and composite in form. This is the secret of 
its structure, which though extremely illusive is susceptible 
of analysis. 

Until his forty-fifth year Lamb was engaged in tentative and 
'prentice work, none of which would have given him a high 
permanent reputation. It was only with the establishment of 
the London in 1820 that he found the proper vehicle for his 

1 De Quincey's Works, Vol. V, p. 220, Masson ed. 

2 Essays of Elia, Introduction, p. xiv (Camelot Series). 

3 Saintsbury's History of Nineteenth-Century Literature, p. 181. 



INTRODUCTION XXV 

genius. The fortunate opening was industriously taken advan- 
tage of, and during the next thirteen years there appeared 
in the London and other periodicals that series of Essays of 
Elia upon which his title to an immortality of fame now securely 
rests. It is not strange that so gifted a person should have 
invented for his use a special instrument which was perfectly 
adequate to the expression of his inimitable mind. 

One of the earliest impressions made on the student of these 
essays is the author's apparently haphazard and incongruous 
choice of themes. Closer investigation, however, will disclose 
the fact that all the subjects group themselves under three or 
four general heads. One class is antiquarian, and includes 
such papers as The South-Sea House, Chrisfs Hospital, and 
The Old Benchers ; another is social, examples being Mrs. 
Battle's Opinions on Whist, Imperfect Sympathies, Grace 
before Meat, and Old China ; a third is critical, and discusses 
topics of general or philosophic interest, such as Sanity of 
True Genius and Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading. 
Under this classification are found personal reminiscences, 
character sketches, bits of folklore, poetical rhapsodies, and 
criticism. Lamb followed the custom of the Spectator in 
choosing subjects of interest to the unprofessional reader, 
such as holidays, witches, religion, plays, relatives, cooking, 
newspapers, china, famous places and people. Self-confidence 
was shown in the selection of these familiar and often com- 
monplace topics, for any failure here in freshness of style or 
originality of thought would have been conspicuous, perhaps 
fatal. Elia hands down to the nineteenth century the best 
traditions of the popular eighteenth-century periodical essay. 
" He showed," says Saintsbury, " how the occasional in lit- 
erature might be made classical." He is "an epitome of the 
lighter side of belles lettres,^^ and often something more, for 
in addition to entertaining us he teaches us to observe, to 
analyze, to philosophize. 



xxvi INTRODUCTION 

It is important to take into account the external influences, 
as well as the more hidden springs of thought and feehng, 
which helped to mold his style. As to conventional form, 
as well as in choice of subject, he followed the type of the 
personal essay found in the Tatler and the Spectator. Steele 
and Addison were pioneers in making good literature of the 
chitchat of the tea table and the weightier talk of the coffee- 
house, and thus beguiled the illiterate fops and fine ladies into 
a love of reading. Lamb and the other Cockney essayists 
were the heirs of all this literary experience, but they made 
important additions to their heritage. To the wit, correctness, 
philosophy, and common sense of the eighteenth century they 
added the warmth, geniality, freedom, and individuality of the 
nineteenth. 

For Lamb's masters in style and his intellectual affinities we 
must go back to an earlier period. " What appears to the 
hasty -reader artificial in Lamb's style," says Ainger, "was 
natural to him. For in this matter of style he was the product 
of his reading, and from a child his reading had lain in the 
dramatists and generally in the great imaginative writers of the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Shakespeare and Milton 
he knew almost by heart ; Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, 
Ford, and Webster were hardly less familiar to him ; and next 
to these, the writers of the so-called metaphysical school, the 
later developments of the Euphuistic fashion had the strongest 
fascination for him. When the fantastic vein took the pedantic- 
humorous shape, as in Burton ; or the metaphysical-humorous, 
as in Sir Thomas Browne ; or where it was combined with true 
poetic sensibility, as in Wither and Marvell, — of these springs 
Lamb had drunk so deeply that his mind was saturated with 
them. His own nature became ' subdued to what it worked 
in.' For him to bear, not only on his style but on the cast 
of his mind and fancy, the mark of these writers, and many 
more in whom genius and eccentricity went together, was no 



INTRODUCTION XXVll 

matter of choice. It was this that constituted the ' self-pleasing 
quaintness ' of his literary manner."^ 

The surprising range and variety of Lamb's subjects are an 
index of his mental activity and breadth of sympathy; but 
the complex and heterogeneous elements that enter into his 
style reveal his sensitiveness to language and his capacity for 
absorbing without loss of originahty the best that had preceded 
him. His mind may be thought of as a magic alembic which 
had the virtue of distilHng a variety of strange simples into 
a new quintessence beautiful and aromatic. Henry Nelson 
Coleridge in the Etonian asserts that " Charles Lamb writes 
the best, purest, and most genuine English of any man living. 
For genuine Anglicism, which amongst all other essentials of 
excellence in our native literature is now recovering itself 
from the leaden mace of the Ra7nbler, he is quite a study ; his 
prose is absolutely perfect, it conveys thought without smother- 
ing it in blankets."^ His style kept pace in flexibility with 
the versatility of its author, and readily adapted itself to the 
matter in hand. Thus each theme with its respective mood 
finds a natural and effective garb, yet the peculiar, unmistak- 
able touch of Lamb is never absent. It is not exaggeration to 
say that in him English prose style reached its climax, and 
this view is now generally accepted. 

Lamb is one of our most bookish writers. His essays have 
something suggestive of the musty odor of old folios, always 
the atmosphere of the study. He felt the lack of the highest 
university training, and laid no claim to profound scholarship. 
Few of his essays, however, fail to show industrious browsing 
in that rich pasturage of Samuel Salt's library. The works 
of the poets, rhetoricians, and playwrights of the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries were his " midnight darlings." It 
was in their fields that he loved to glean. His habit of keeping 

1 The Essays of Elia, p. vii, Ainger ed. 

2 'Ibid., p. iv. 



XXVlll INTRODUCTION 

scrapbooks, in which he copied selections from his favorite 
authors, enabled him to make a ready use of the best of what 
he had read. Lamb is an inveterate but happy quoter, and 
many of his quotations are difficult to trace. Some are taken 
from obscure nooks and crannies of literature but little explored 
by even the bookworms of our day. An examination of his 
method of weaving in choice pieces from other authors will 
disclose some interesting facts. Sometimes he quotes inaccu- 
rately or paraphrases as if from memory ; again he deliberately 
changes the language to suit his context; often he merely 
suggests some familiar passage by a delicately allusive phrasing. 
His style holds in solution a sufficient amount of recondite 
allusion and scholarly reference to please the most learned, 
and at the same time it delights the general reader with its 
racy, idiomatic English and its many echoes of the language 
of the Bible. Thus there are in Lamb's style, aside from its 
substance, many elements that make for permanency. 

Lamb's usual manner is the conversational. The long liter- 
ary correspondence which he conducted with Coleridge, Words- 
worth, Manning, and others was his best training school. We 
have seen how many of his letters are little essays in the germ. 
The essays were composed slowly and with the utmost pains. 
They were not hastily and carelessly dashed off. Their author 
was a master of the art that conceals art, and though the whole 
result may be easy and familiar, each sentence and paragraph 
has received the skillful manipulation of the trained stylist. 
The discursive structure of the essays, the frequent digressions, 
the parentheses, and the abrupt transitions are but devices to 
give them an easy, unconventional tone. The normal plane 
in writing gives opportunity for that rise and fall in feeling 
which afford relief from monotony, like the use of light and 
shade in art. The reader imagines himself listening quietly to 
the fascinating talk of a beloved companion who for the most 
part chats delightfully in a witty or sentimental mood, with 



INTRODUCTION XXIX 

many half-whispered asides, but who now and then warms with 
his theme and rises eloquently into heights of rhapsody or 
apostrophe. 

The quality that has given Lamb his distinctive place in the 
development of English prose is his humor. He was a humor- 
ist in the old historic sense, his humor being the outgrowth of 
his character, and also a talent which he strove to improve by 
cultivation. There was besides a vast deal of wisdom in his 
wit. As other men have labored to become profound or elo- 
quent, so Lamb studied to be humorous. He devoted himself 
painstakingly to placing this gift upon a refined and intellectual 
plane. His habit of making quips on serious matters led the 
critical to charge him with masquerading as a man who took 
himself as a joke, but his friends knew that he "wore a martyr's 
heart beneath his suit of motley and jested that he might not 
weep." Besides, in following his natural bent, he was true 
to his best instincts. Of all the English humorists he most 
resembles Sir Thomas Browne and Thomas Fuller, two of his 
favorite authors. His bizarre vocabulary, coinages from the 
Latin, and his turn for the quaint and unexpected are charac- 
teristics which he has in common with the author of Religio 
Medici; his fondness for verbal quips, figures, and extravagant 
conceits reminds us of The Worthies of England. Coleridge's 
remark on Fuller that " his wit was the stuff and substance of 
his style " applies equally well to Lamb. When we compare 
the letters with the essays we see a tendency and a growth, 
for Elia is the outcome of the habit of seeing and presenting 
things humorously. 

Lamb's humorous effects are produced in such a variety of 
ways that one must read a good deal of him to appreciate his 
versatility. We can indicate here only a few of his many 
devices for getting fun out of a subject. His title of the 
" Last of the Elizabethans " is nowhere better justified than 
in his fondness for verbal humpr, He delights in words, and 



XXX INTRODUCTION 

revives the literary standing of the long-neglected pun and 
the conceits so much in vogue in the days of Lyly and Sidney. 
He thus reveals many latent resources of our vocabulary and 
lends fresh interest to the dictionary. We suddenly come 
across such strange words as hobby-dehoys, manducation, 
periegesis, orgasm, traydrille, obolary, and deodands, and 
discover that he is using learned or unusual terms to dignify 
the commonplace. Less original but very happy is his use 
of the simile, where he expresses his aversion to dying, " I 
am not content to pass away like a weaver's shuttle." Again, 
what an indescribable flavor is imparted to his paper on Poor 
Relations by dropping into the archaic style, " He casually 
looketh in about dinner-time," etc. 

Lamb revels in exaggeration, hyperbole, and the mock 
heroic, and he frequently indulges in burlesque, anticlimax, 
and caricature. One leading form of his humor depends upon 
some oddity or incongruity of character. How delightful is 
the sophistry in the thesis that "the title to property in a book 
is in exact ratio to the claimant's powers of understanding and 
appreciating the same." How gravely he asserts that "a man 
cannot have a pure mind who refuses apple-dumplings," and 
how equally cheerfully he announces that a certain undertaker 
"lets lodgings for single gentlemen." "Amanda, have you a 
midriff \.o bestow? " illustrates his use of burlesque ; the burn- 
ing of the cottages for the purpose of roasting pigs, the mock 
heroic; and his reference to Locke in the same connection, 
the ironical. A specimen of tender and unexpected humor is 
the remark about himself and his sister that " we are generally 
in harmony, with occasional bickerings — as it should be 
among near relations." Ainger aptly calls this " the antithesis 
of irony, — the hiding of a sweet after-taste in a bitter word." 

"No one describes," says Hazhtt, " the manners of the last 
generation so well as Mr. Lamb; with so fine, and yet so 
formal an air; with such vivid obscurity; with such arch 



INTRODUCTION XXXI 

piquancy, such picturesque quaintness, such smiling pathos." ^ 
Lamb has left, at least in his essays, no full-length portraiture 
of character. This is not to be expected. In heu of this 
he has drawn a whole gallery of pastels or pen-and-ink sketches, 
— dehghtful Jonsonese studies of every man in his humor. 
In his characterization Lamb is neither a satirist nor a carica- 
turist; there is nothing purposely distorted or exaggerated 
about his figures. He does not conceal any oddity of dress 
or manner, he does not hesitate to call attention to any idio- 
syncrasy whether ludicrous or admirable ; but he goes further, 
and with keen insight and a sweet and gentle sympathy he 
makes us feel the essential humanity of the person described. 
He has a faculty nothing short of genius of suggesting char- 
acter by a few rapid touches. How quickly we become 
acquainted with the formal John Tipp, swearing at his little 
orphans, whose rights he is guarding with absolute fidelity ; or 
the noble and sensible Bridget Elia, whose presence of mind, 
though equal to the most pressing trials of life, sometimes 
deserts her upon trifling occasions. There, too, is the men- 
dacious voyager, himself fictitious, who perfectly remembers 
seeing a phoenix in his travels in upper Egypt. And, best of all, 
we repeat the opinions of that rigorous, strenuous old dame, 
Mrs. Battle, who next to her devotions loved a good game of 
whist. Like Dickens, Lamb dissected the humors of his char- 
acters with a loving hand ; there was no malice in his smile and 
his sarcasm was only arch pleasantry. " Seeking his materials," 
says Talfourd, "for the most part in the common paths of life, 
often in the humblest, he gives an importance to everything, 
and sheds a grace over all." In the unpretentious department 
of miniature painting Lamb is an artist of the first rank. 

The scope of this introduction does not admit of an extended 
discussion of all Lamb's literary output. His letters, poems, 

1 Hazlitt's Spirit of the Age, p. 114. 



XXXU INTRODUCTION 

plays, translations, and short stories must remain uncriticized. 
Space remains for only a few remarks on his work as a critic. 
Although widely read and endowed with rare insight and a 
sensitive taste, his limitations as a critic were serious and fun- 
damental. His opinions of men, books, paintings, plays, and 
the conduct of life are based rather on sentiment and pre- 
judice than on reason and technical considerations. His 
judgments, therefore, are often unreliable and open to objec- 
tion, and so are mainly interesting because of their striking 
originality and finished style. Lamb's method is impression- 
istic ; he has almost nothing in common with the more recent • 
school of scientific criticism represented by Matthew Arnold. 
Leaving out the biting satire and cruel personahties of Jeffreys, 
Gifford, and Wilson, Lamb is much like his contemporary 
reviewers. Some of the whimsical and paradoxical elements 
of the Elia essays are found also in the critical papers. 

Lamb's merits as well as his limitations as a critic of art are 
seen in his essay On the Gefiius and Character of Hogarth. 
This is a case of special pleading, and was written to vindicate 
the noble qualities of the painter's work. The classical school 
of artists had attacked Hogarth on the charge that he was a 
mere caricaturist, a defective draughtsman, and that he showed 
slight knowledge of the human figure. In defense of his 
favorite, Lamb takes the high ground that Hogarth was a great 
satirist and moralist, and that he aimed to make a series of 
realistic and dramatic drawings which should depict life in all 
its vigor and variety. What attracted Lamb was the story 
in the pictures overflowing with the humor and pathos of 
humanity. Therefore what seemed to others grotesque and 
horrible was to him amusing or sublime. He ran the risk 
of damaging his cause by overstatement, as with the print of 
Gin La?ie, where he missed the real meaning of the picture. 
He judged as a novelist, not as a painter, and found in the 
drawings only what he wished to find there. As a critic of 



INTRODUCTION XXxiii 

art he is unconvincing because of his ignorance of technical 
matters, but his interpretation of the moral power of any 
particular work is stimulating and therefore valuable. 

In the realm of Hterature Lamb's critical faculty was deli- 
cate and penetrative. Here again the personal equation 
appears, for the value of his remarks depends largely upon his 
like or dislike of the author under consideration. For this 
reason his judgments of his contemporaries are unrehable 
except in the case of friends. "Where his heart was," says 
Ainger, " there his judgment was sound. Where he actively 
disHked, or was passively indifferent, his critical powers 
remained dormant." It is to be expected that he would be 
unappreciative of most of the writers of his own day. He 
admired Coleridge more than Wordsworth, and cared nothing 
for Scott, Shelley, or Byron, whom he did not know personally. 

Lamb's position as a critic now rests on his choice bits of 
criticism of the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries, particularly the dramatists contemporary with Shake- 
speare. In his brief comments on the characters in the prin- 
cipal plays of this period is revealed a mind remarkable for 
its poetic sensitiveness and interpretative imagination. In his 
longer critical papers he prefers to take a narrow field and an 
unusual point of view. It is therefore important for the 
reader to get at the precise question which Lamb proposes to 
argue in each case, otherwise his position will seem absurd. 
Thus in his Shakespeare' s Tragedies he discusses certain limita- 
tions of the stage, and makes an admirable argument on the 
proposition that there are intellectual qualities in dramatic 
poetry which cannot be interpreted by the actor's art. 

The time has come when, by eliminating all that does not 
make for permanence, we can fairly estimate Lamb's contribu- 
tion to English prose ; and we may confidently assert that his 
niche in the pantheon of famous authors is definite and 
secure. The happy originality of his genius renders him 



XXXIV INTRODUCTION 

singularly free from unfavorable comparison with previous 
writers, from contemporary rivalry, and from the fluctuations 
of critical judgments in the future. All now unite in awarding 
him high praise for the leading part which he bore in the 
rediscovery of the rich treasures of the Elizabethan drama, 
and in the recrudescence of the quaint style of the humorists 
and philosophers of the seventeenth century. Furthermore, 
his inspiring example of combining business and culture in 
the face of appalling difficulties has made him personally the 
best beloved man in our literary history. The Elia papers 
justly take an honored place in the long succession of periodi- 
cal essays that adorn the language. As an expression of their 
author's genial, elastic, and reflective mind they are marvel- 
ously perfect, and alone would entitle Charles Lamb to a 
secure place among the immortals. 



IV. LIBRARY REFERENCES 

I, Editions. There are several complete editions of Lamb's 
writings, the fullest and most satisfactory being Fitzgerald, Life., 
Letters., and Writings of Charles Lamb (1876) in 6 vols. ; Ainger, 
Works of Charles Lamb (i 883-1 888) in 6 vols.; and Crowell, 
Works of Charles Lanib (1882) in 5 vols., now out of print. 
Included in the last-named edition are "The Letters of Charles 
Lamb with a Sketch of His Life" (1837) and "The Final 
Memorials of Charles Lamb " (1848), both by Talfourd, and both 
authoritative works having the interest and value of autobiography. 

Ainger, Letters of Charles Lamb in 2 vols., is the best collection 
of his correspondence. The cheapest one-volume edition complete 
is Shepherd's, published by Chatto and Windus. A centenary 
edition of his complete works was published by Routledge. 
Moxon's edition was one of the earliest, but does not include the 
letters. Among the best editions of the Essays of Elia are Ainger's 
(containing many interesting notes for the general reader) ; Walter 
Scott's, with a brief introduction by Ernest Rhys (no notes) ; Chatto 



INTRODUCTION XXXV 

and Windus' ; Kent's (notes few and inaccurate) ; and Bliss Perry's 
" Selections from Lamb " in his Little Masterpieces. None of the 
foregoing editions are intended for students. W. Carew Hazlitt 
compiled a useful volume entitled Charles and Mary Lamb : 
Poems ^ Letters^ and Re7nains (1874). 

II. Biog7'aphy and Criticis77t. Ainger's Charles La7nb (1882) 
in the " English Men of Letters " series is the most important life 
of Lamb, and contains a full analysis and criticism of his works. 
The introduction to the same author's edition of the Essays of 
Elia is an admirable critique. A good short life of Lamb, com- 
bined with criticism, by the same writer, is found in the Dictio7iary 
of Natio7tal Biography^ Vol. XXX, pp. 423-429. De Quincey's 
biographical sketch in his complete works, Vol. V, pp. 215-258 
(Masson ed.), is the most eloquent and philosophical monograph 
on Lamb. Charles La77ib : A Metnoir (1866) by Procter (Barry 
Cornwall) has much original material. Cradock's Charles La77tb, 
Peabody's Charles La7nb at his Desk (1872), and Marten's In the 
Footprints of Charles Lamb, are all full of personal interest and 
background. 

Saintsbury's estimate of Lamb in his History of Ni7ieteenth- 
Century Literature (1896) is just and penetrative. Swinburne's 
" Charles Lamb and George Wither" in his Miscella7iies (1895) 
is a brilliant and enthusiastic study of Lamb as a critic. Mrs. 
Oliphant's discussion of Lamb in her Literary History of E7igland 
(1894), Vol. II, pp. 1-18, is merely a repetition of Talfourd's impres- 
sions. Bliss Perry 's little essay in his " Selections " is fresh and 
suggestive. The last chapter of Hazlitt's Spirit of the Age (1825) 
is a glowing appreciation. The same writer's beautiful essay On 
Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen narrates the conversation 
at one of Lamb's parties. 

Much interesting anecdotage and critical comment will be found 
scattered through the following books : Gilchrist's Life of Mary 
La77ib J Sandford's Tho77ias Poole a7id his Frie7ids and Elia 
a7id Geoffrey Crayon; Haydon's Autobiography a7id four7ials 
(1853); H. C. Robinson's Diary; Leigh Hunt's Autobiography 
(1850); Thomas Hood's Literary Re77iinisce7ices (1839); P. G. 
Patmore's My Friends and Acquai7itances (1854); W. C. Hazlitt's 



XXXVl INTRODUCTION 

Me7fioirs of Williajn Hazlitt (1867); Mrs. Matthews' Memoir 
of Charles Matthews (1838); Cottle's Early Recollections of 
Coleridge (1837); Gillman's, Campbell's, and Alsop's biographies 
of Coleridge ; Southey's Life and Correspondence ; Barton's 
Poe?ns, Life^ and Letters (1849); and Augustine Birrell's Obiter 
Dicta (1887). 

The following magazine articles show considerable research : 
" The Sad Side of the Humorist's Life " mLittell, January, 1832 ; 
Mary Cowden Clarke's " Recollections of Mary Lamb " in the 
same magazine for April, 1858; "Charles Lamb and Sydney 
Smith," a strong piece of comparative criticism, in the Atlantic, 
March, 1859; "Concerning Charles Lamb" in Scribner''s, March, 
1876; and "Gleanings after his Biographers" in Macmillan''s, 
April, 1867. 

The most complete bibliography of Lamb is that by E. D. 
North, appended to Marten's In the Footprints of Charles Lamb 
(1890). 



ESSAYS OF ELIA 



I. A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA 

By a Friend 

This gentleman, who for some months past had been in a 
decHning way, hath at length paid his final tribute to nature. 
He just lived long enough (it was what he wished) to see his 
papers collected into a volume. The pages of the London 
Magazine will henceforth know him no more. 5 

Exactly at twelve last night, his queer spirit departed ; and 
the bells of Saint Bride's rang him out with the old year. 
The mournful vibrations were caught in the dining-room of 
his friends T. and H., and the company, assembled there to 
welcome in another First of January, checked their carous- 10 
als in mid-mirth, and were silent. Janus wept. The gentle 

P r, in a whisper, signified his intention of devoting an 

elegy ; and Allan C, nobly forgetful of his countrymen's 
wrongs, vowed a memoir to his manes full and friendly as a 
*'Tale of Lyddalcross." 15 

To say truth, it is time he were gone. The humour of the 
thing, if there was ever much in it, was pretty well exhausted ; 
and a two years' and a half existence has been a tolerable 
duration for a phantom. 

I am now at liberty to confess, that much which I have 20 
heard objected to my late friend's writings was well-founded. 
Crude they are, I grant you — a sort of unhcked, incondite 
things — villanously pranked in an affected array of antique 
modes and phrases. They had not been his^ if they had been 



2 A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA 

other than such; and better it is, that a writer should be 
natural in a self-pleasing quaintness, than to affect a natural- 
ness (so called) that should be strange to him. Egotistical 
they have been pronounced by some who did not know, that 
5 what he tells us, as of himself, was often true only (historically) 
of another ; as in a former Essay (to save many instances) — 
where under \h& first person (his favourite figure) he shadows 
forth the forlorn estate of a country-boy placed at a London 
school, far from his friends and connexions — in direct oppo- 

lo sition to his own early history. If it be egotism to imply 
and twine with his own identity the griefs and affections of 
another — making himself many, or reducing many unto him- | 
self — then is the skilful novelist, who all along brings in his 
hero, or heroine, speaking of themselves, the greatest egotist 

15 of allj who yet has never, therefore, been accused of that 
narrowness. And how shall the intenser dramatist escape 
being faulty, who doubtless, under cover of passion uttered 
by another, oftentimes gives blameless vent to his most inward 
feelings, and expresses his own story modestly? 

20 My late friend was in many respects a singular character. 
Those who did not like him, hated him ; and some, who .once 
liked him, afterwards became his bitterest haters. The truth 
is, he gave himself too little concern what he uttered, and in 
whose presence. He observed neither time nor place, and 

25 would e'en out with what came uppermost. With the severe 
rehgionist he would pass for a free-thinker ; while the other 
faction set him down for a bigot, or persuaded themselves that 
he belied his sentiments. Few understood him; and I am 
not certain that at all times he quite understood himself. He 

30 too much affected that dangerous figure — irony. He sowed 
doubtful speeches, and reaped plain, unequivocal hatred. — 
He would interrupt the gravest discussion with some light 
jest ; and yet, perhaps, not quite irrelevant in ears that could 
understand it. Your long and much talkers hated him. The 



A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA 3 

informal habit of his mind, joined to an inveterate impedi- 
ment of speech, forbade him to be an orator ; and he seemed 
determined that no one else should play that part when he 
was present. He was petit and ordinary in his person and 
appearance. I have seen him sometimes in what is called 5 
good company, but where he has been a stranger, sit silent, 
and be suspected for an odd fellow ; till some unlucky occa- 
sion provoking it, he would stutter out some senseless pun 
(not altogether senseless perhaps, if rightly taken), which has 
stamped his character for the evening. It was hit or miss 10 
with him ; but nine times out of ten, he contrived by this 
device to send away a whole company his enemies. His 
conceptions rose kindlier than his utterance, and his happi- 
est impromptus had the appearance of effort. He has been 
accused of trying to be witty, when in truth he was but strug- 15 
gling to give his poor thoughts articulation. He chose his 
companions for some individuality of character which they 
manifested. — Hence, not many persons of science, and few 
professed literati, were of his councils. They were, for the 
most part, persons of an uncertain fortune ; and, as to such 20 
people commonly nothing is more obnoxious than a gentle- 
man of settled (though moderate) income, he passed with most 
of them for a great miser. To my knowledge this was a mis- 
take. His intimados, to confess a truth, were in the world's 
eye a ragged regiment. He found them floating on the sur- 25 
face of society ; and the colour, or something else, in the weed 
pleased him. The burrs stuck to him — but they were good 
and loving burrs for all that. He never greatly cared for the 
society of what are called good people. If any of these were 
scandalized (and offences were sure to arise), he could not 30 
help it. When he has been remonstrated with for not making 
more concessions to the feelings of good people, he would 
retort by asking, what one point did these good people 
ever concede to him? He was temperate in his meals and 



4 A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA 

diversions, but always kept a little on this side of abstemious- 
ness. Only in the use of the Indian weed he might be thought 
a little excessive. He took it, he would say, as a solvent of 
speech. Marry — as the friendly vapour ascended, how his 

5 prattle would curl up sometimes with it ! the ligaments, which 
tongue-tied him, were loosened, and the stammerer proceeded 
a statist ! 

I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or rejoice 
that my old friend is departed. His jests were beginning to 

10 grow obsolete, and his stories to be found out. He felt the 
approaches of age ; and while he pretended to cling to life, 
you saw how slender were the ties left to bind him. Dis- 
coursing with him latterly on this subject, he expressed him- 
self with a pettishness, which I thought unworthy of him. 

15 In our walks about his suburban retreat (as he called it) at 
Shacklewell, some children belonging to a school of industry 
had met us, and bowed and curtseyed, as he thought, in an 
especial manner to hi7n. "They take me for a visiting gov- 
ernor," he muttered earnestly. He had a horror, which he 

20 carried to a foible, of looking like anything important and 
parochial. He thought that he approached nearer to that 
stamp daily. He had a general aversion from being treated 
like a grave or respectable character, and kept a wary eye 
upon the advances of age that should so entitle him. He 

25 herded always, while it was possible, with people younger than 
himself. He did not conform to the march of time, but was 
dragged along in the procession. His manners lagged behind 
his years. He was too much of the boy-man. The toga viri- 
lis never sate gracefully on his shoulders. The impressions of 

30 infancy had burnt into him, and he resented the impertinence 
of manhood. These were weaknesses ; but such as they were, 
they are a key to explicate some of his writings. 

[He left little property behind him. Of course, the little 
that is left (chiefly in India bonds) devolves upon his cousin 



A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA 5 

Bridget. A few critical dissertations were found in his escri- 
toire^ which have been handed over to the editor of this 
magazine, in which it is to be hoped they will shortly appear, 
retaining his accustomed signature. 

He has himself not obscurely hinted that his employment 5 
lay in a public office. The gentlemen in the export depart- 
ment of the East India House will forgive me if I acknowledge 
the readiness with which they assisted me in the retrieval of 
his few manuscripts. They pointed out in a most obliging 
manner the desk at which he had been planted for forty years ; 10 
showed me ponderous tomes of figures, in his own remarkably 
neat hand, which, more properly than his few printed tracts, 
might be called his " Works." They seemed affectionate to 
his memory, and universally commended his expertness in 
book-keeping. It seems he was the inventor of some ledger 15 
which should combine the precision and certainty of the Italian 
double entry (I think they called it) with the brevity and 
facility of some newer German system; but I am not able to 
appreciate the worth of the discovery. I have often heard 
him express a warm regard for his associates in office, and 20 
how fortunate he considered himself in having his lot thrown 
in amongst them. "There is more sense, more discourse, 
more shrewdness, and even talent, among these clerks," he 
would say, " than in twice the number of authors by profes- 
sion that I have conversed with." He would brighten up 25 
sometimes upon the " old days of the India House," when 
he consorted with Woodroffe and Wissett, and Peter Corbet 
(a descendant and worthy representative, bating the point of 
sanctity, of old facetious Bishop Corbet) ; and Hoole, who 
translated Tasso ; and Bartlemy Brown, whose father (God 30 
assoil him therefor !) modernized Walton ; and sly, warm- 
hearted old Jack Cole (King Cole they called him in those 
days) and Campe and Fombelle, and a world of choice spirits, 
more than I can remember to name, who associated in those 



6 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 

days with Jack Burrell (the hon-vivant of the South-Sea 
House) ; and httle Eyton (said to be a fac-simile of Pope, 
— he was a miniature of a gentleman), that was cashier 
under him ; and Dan Voight of the Custom-house, that left 
5 the famous library. 

Well, Elia is gone, — for aught I know, to be re-united with 
them, — and these poor traces of his pen are all we have to 
show for it. How little survives of the wordiest authors ! Of 
all they said or did in their lifetime, a few glittering words 
lo only ! His Essays found some favourers, as they appeared 
separately ; they shuffled their way in the crowd well enough 
singly ; how they will read^ now they are brought together, is 
a question for the publishers, who have thus ventured to draw 
out into one piece his "weaved-up follies."] 

xHIL-ELIA. 



II. THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 

15 Reader, in thy passage from the Bank — where thou hast 
been receiving thy half-yearly dividends (supposing thou art 
a lean annuitant like myself) — to the Flower Pot, to secure 
a place for Dalston, or Shacklewell, or some other thy subur- 
ban retreat northerly, — didst thou never observe a melan- 

20 choly-looking, handsome, brick and stone edifice, to the left 
— where Threadneedle Street abuts upon Bishopsgate ? I dare- 
say thou hast often admired its magnificent portals ever gaping 
wide, and disclosing to view a grave court, with cloisters, and 
pillars, with few or no traces of goers-in or comers-out — a 

25 desolation something like Balclutha's.^ 

This was once a house of trade, — a centre of busy interests. 
The throng of merchants was here — the quick pulse of gain 

1 I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate. — 

OSSIAN. 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 7 

— and here some forms of business are still kept up, though 
the soul be long since fled. Here are still to be seen stately 
porticoes ; imposing staircases ; offices roomy as the state 
apartments in palaces — deserted, or thinly peopled with a 
few straggling clerks ; the still more sacred interiors of court 5 
and committee-rooms, with venerable faces of beadles, door- 
keepers — directors seated in form on solemn days (to pro- 
claim a dead dividend), at long worm-eaten tables, that have 
been mahogany, with tarnished gilt-leather coverings, supporting 
massy silver inkstands long since dry ; — the oaken wainscots 10 
hung with pictures of deceased governors and sub-governors, 
of Queen Anne, and the two first monarchs of the Brunswick 
dynasty ; — huge charts, which subsequent discoveries have 
antiquated ; — dusty maps of Mexico, dim as dreams, — and 
soundings of the Bay of Panama ! — The long passages hung 15 
with buckets, appended, in idle row, to walls, whose substance 
might defy any, short of the last conflagration : — with vast 
ranges of cellarage under all, where dollars and pieces of eight 
once lay, an "unsunned heap," for Mammon to have solaced 
his solitary heart withal, — long since dissipated, or scattered 20 
into air at the blast of the breaking of that famous Bubble. — 
Such is the South-Sea House. At least, such it was forty 
years ago, when I knew it, — a magnificent relic ! What altera- 
tions may have been made in it since, I have had no opportuni- 
ties of verifying. Time, I take for granted, has not freshened it. 25 
No wind has resuscitated the face of the sleeping waters. 
A thicker crust by this time stagnates upon it. The moths, 
that were then battening upon its obsolete ledgers and day- 
books, have rested from their depredations, but other light 
generations have succeeded, making fine fretwork among their 3^ 
single and double entries. Layers of dust have accumulated 
(a superfoetation of dirt !) upon the old layers, that seldom 
used to be disturbed, save by some curious finger, now and 
then, inquisitive to explore the mode of book-keeping in 



8 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 

Queen Anne's reign ; or, with less hallowed curiosity, seek- 
ing to unveil some of the mysteries of that tremendous hoax, 
whose extent the petty peculators of our day look back upon 
with the same expression of incredulous admiration, and hope- 
5 less ambition of rivalry, as would become the puny face of 
modern conspiracy contemplating the Titan size of Vaux's 
superhuman plot. 

Peace to the manes of the Bubble ! Silence and destitu- 
tion are upon thy walls, proud house, for a memorial ! 

lo Situated as thou art, in the very heart of stirring and living 
commerce, — amid the fret and fever of speculation — with 
the Bank, and the 'Change, and the India House about thee, 
in the hey-day of present prosperity, with their important faces, 
as it were, insulting thee, their poor neighbour out of busmess 

15 — to the idle and merely contemplative, — to such as me, old 
house ! there is a charm in thy quiet : — a cessation — a cool- 
ness from business — an indolence almost cloistral — which is 
delightful ! With what reverence have I paced thy great bare 
rooms and courts at eventide ! They spoke of the past : — 

20 the shade of some dead accountant, with visionary pen in ear, 
would flit by me, stiff as in life. Living accounts and account- 
ants puzzle me. I have no skill in figuring. But thy great 
dead tomes, which scarce three degenerate clerks of the present 
day could lift from their enshrining shelves — with their old 

25 fantastic flourishes, and decorative rubric interlacings — their 
sums in triple columniations, set down with formal superfluity 
of cyphers — with pious sentences at the beginning, without 
which our religious ancestors never ventured to open a book 
of business, or bill of lading — the costly vellum covers of 

30 some of them almost persuading us that we are got into some 
better library, — are very agreeable and edifying spectacles. 
I can look upon these defunct dragons with complacency. 
Thy heavy odd-shaped ivory-handled penknives (our ancestors 
had everything on a larger scale than we have hearts for) are 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 9 

as good as anything from Herculaneum. The pounce-boxes 
of our days have gone retrograde. 

The very clerks which I remember in the South-Sea House 
— I speak of forty years back — had an air very different from 
those in the pubHc offices that I have had to do with since, s 
They partook of the genius of the place ! 

They were mostly (for the estabhshment did not admit 
of superfluous salaries) bachelors. Generally (for they had 
not much to do) persons of a curious and speculative turn 
of mind. Old-fashioned, for a reason mentioned before. lo 
Humourists, for they were of all descriptions ; and, not hav- 
ing been brought together in early Ufe (which has a tendency 
to assimilate the members of corporate bodies to each other), 
but, for the most part, placed in this house in ripe or middle 
age, they necessarily carried into it their separate habits and 1 5 
oddities, unqualified, if I may so speak, as into a common 
stock. Hence they formed a sort of Noah's ark. Odd fishes. 
A lay-monastery. Domestic retainers in a great house, kept 
more for show than use. Yet pleasant fellows, full of chat 

and not a few among them had arrived at considerable 20 

proficiency on the German flute. 

The cashier at that time was one Evans, a Cambro-Briton. 
He had something of the choleric complexion of his country- 
men stamped on his visage, but was a worthy sensible man at 
bottom. He wore his hair, to the last, powdered and frizzed 25 
out, in the fashion which I remember to have seen in carica- 
tures of what were termed, in my young days, Maccaronies. 
He was the last of that race of beaux. Melancholy as a gib- 
cat over his counter all the forenoon, I think I see him making 
up his cash (as they call it) with tremulous fingers, as if he 30 
feared every one about him was a defaulter; in his hypo- 
chondry ready to imagine himself one ; haunted, at least, with 
the idea of the possibihty of his becoming one : his tristful 
visage clearing up a httle over his roast neck of veal at 



4 

lO THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 1 

Anderton's at two (where his picture still hangs, taken a little . 
before his death by desire of the master of the coffee-house, I 
which he had frequented for the last five-and-twenty years), 
but not attaining the meridian of its animation till evening j 
5 brought on the hour of tea and visiting. The simultaneous 
sound of his well-known rap at the door with the stroke of 
the clock announcing six, was a topic of never-failing mirth in 
the families which this dear old bachelor gladdened with his 
presence. Then was his forte, his glorified hour ! How would 

10 he chirp, and expand over a muffin ! How would he dilate 
into secret history ! His countryman Pennant himself, in par- 
ticular, could not be more eloquent than he in relation to old 
and new London — the site of old theatres, churches, streets 
gone to decay — where Rosamond's Pond stood — the Mul- 

15 berry Gardens — and the Conduit in Cheap — with many a 
pleasant anecdote, derived from paternal tradition, of those 
grotesque figures which Hogarth has immortahzed in his pic- 
ture oi Noon, — the worthy descendants of those heroic con- 
fessors, who, flying to this country, from the wrath of Louis 

20 the Fourteenth and his dragoons, kept alive the flame of pure 
rehgion in the sheltering obscurities of Hog Lane, and the 
vicinity of the Seven Dials ! 

Deputy, under Evans, was Thomas Tame. He had the air 
and stoop of a nobleman. You would have taken him for one, 

25 had you met him in one of the passages leading to Westmin- 
ster Hall. By stoop I mean that gentle bending of the body 
forwards, which, in great men, must be supposed to be the 
effect of an habitual condescending attention to the applica- 
tions of their inferiors. While he held you in converse, you 

30 felt strained to the height in the colloquy. The conference 
over, you were at leisure to smile at the comparative insignifi- 
cance of the pretensions which had just awed you. His intel- 
lect was of the shallowest order. It did not reach to a saw or 
a proverb. His mind was in its original state of white paper. 

% 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 1 1 

A sucking babe might have posed him. What was it then? 
Was he rich ? Alas, no ! Thomas Tame was very poor. 
Both he and his wife looked outwardly gentlefolks, when I fear 
all was not well at all times.within. She had a neat meagre per- 
son, which it was evident she had not sinned in over-pamper- 5 
ing ; but in its veins was noble blood. She traced her descent, 
by some labyrinth of relationship, which I never thoroughly 
understood, — much less can explain with any heraldic cer- 
tainty at this time of day, — to the illustrious, but unfortunate 
house of Derwentwater. This was the secret of Thomas's 10 
stoop. This was the thought — the sentiment — the bright 
solitary star of your lives, — ye mild and happy pair, — which 
cheered you in the night of intellect, and in the obscurity of 
your station ! This was to you instead of riches, instead of 
rank, instead of glittering attainments : and it was worth them 15 
all together. You insulted none with it ; but, while you wore 
it as a piece of defensive armour only, no insult likewise could 
reach you through it. Decus et solamen. 

Of quite another stamp was the then accountant, John Tipp. 
He neither pretended to high blood, nor in good truth cared 20 
one fig about the matter. He " thought an accountant the 
greatest character in the world, and himself the greatest 
accountant in it." Yet John was not without his hobby. 
The fiddle relieved his vacant hours. He sang, certainly, with 
other notes than to the Orphean lyre. He did, indeed, scream 25 
and scrape most abominably. His fine suite of official rooms 
in Threadneedle Street, which, without anything very sub- 
stantial appended to them, were enough to enlarge a man's 
notions of himself that lived in them — (I know not who is 
the occupier of them now ■^) — resounded fortnightly to the 30 

1 [I have since been informed, that the present tenant of them is a 
Mr. Lamb, a gentleman who is happy in the possession of some choice 
pictures, and among them a rare portrait of Milton, which I mean to 
do myself the pleasure of going to see, and at the same time to refresh 



12 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 

notes of a concert of " sweet breasts," as our ancestors would 
have called them, culled from club-rooms and orchestras — 
chorus singers — first and second violoncellos — double basses 
— and clarionets — who ate his cold mutton, and drank his 
5 punch, and praised his ear. He sate like Lord Midas among 
them. But at the desk Tipp was quite another sort of creature. 
Thence all ideas, that were purely ornamental, were banished. 
You could not speak of anything romantic without rebuke. 
Politics were excluded. A newspaper was thought too refined 

lo and abstracted. The whole duty of man consisted in writing 
off dividend warrants. The striking of the annual balance in 
the company's books (which, perhaps, differed from the bal- 
ance of last year in the sum of ;^2 5, is. 6d.) occupied his 
days and nights for a month previous. Not that Tipp was 

15 blind to the deadness of things (as they call them in the city) 
in his beloved house, or did not sigh for a return of the 
old stirring days when South-Sea hopes were young — (he 
was indeed equal to the wielding of any the most intricate 
accounts of the most flourishing company in these or those 

20 days) : — but to a genuine accountant the difference of pro- 
ceeds is as nothing. The fractional farthing is as dear to his 
heart as the thousands which stand before it. He is the true 
actor, who, whether his part be a prince or a peasant, must 
act it with like intensity. With Tipp form was everything. 

25 His life was formal. His actions seemed ruled with a ruler. 
His pen was not less erring than his heart. He made the best 
executor in the world : he was plagued with incessant execu- 
torships accordingly, which excited his spleen and soothed his 
vanity in equal ratios. He would swear (for Tipp swore) at 

30 the little orphans, whose rights he would guard with a tenacity 

my memory with the sight of old scenes. Mr. Lamb has the character 
of a right courteous and communicative collector.] This note was 
omitted in the collected Essays of Elia (1823). The Mr. Lamb here 
mentioned was the author's brother John. — Ed. 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE I 3 

like the grasp of the dying hand that commended their inter- 
ests to his protection. With all this there was about him a 
sort of timidity — (his few enemies used to give it a worse 
name) — a something which, in reverence to the dead, we 
will place, if you please, a little on this side of the heroic. 5 
Nature certainly had been pleased to endow John Tipp with 
a sufficient measure of the principle of self-preservation. 
There is a cowardice which we do not despise, because it 
has nothing base or treacherous in its elements ; it betrays 
itself, not you : it is mere temperament ; the absence of the 10 
romantic and the enterprising ; it sees a lion in the way, and 
will not, with Fortinbras, " greatly find quarrel in a straw," 
when some supposed honour is at stake. Tipp never mounted 
the box of a stage-coach in his life ; or leaned against the 
rails of a balcony; or walked upon the ridge of a parapet; 15 
or looked down a precipice ; or let off a gun ; or went upon 
a water-party ; or would willingly let you go if he could have 
helped it : neither was it recorded of him, that for lucre, or 
for intimidation, he ever forsook friend or principle. 

Whom next shall we summon from the dusty dead, in 20 
whom common qualities become uncommon? Can I forget 
thee, Henry Man, the wit, the pohshed man of letters, the 
author^ of the South-Sea House? who never enteredst thy 
office in a morning, or quittedst it in mid-day — (what didst 
thou in an office?) — without some quirk that left a sting! 25 
Thy gibes and thy jokes are now extinct, or survive but in two 
forgotten volumes, which I had the good fortune to rescue 
from a stall in Barbican, not three days ago, and found thee 
terse, fresh, epigrammatic, as alive. Thy wit is a little gone 
by in these fastidious days — thy topics are staled by the 3° 
"new-born gauds" of the time: — but great thou used to 
be in Public Ledgers, and in Chronicles, upon Chatham and 
Shelburne, and Rockingham, and Howe, and Burgoyne, and 
Clinton, and the war which ended in the tearing from Great 



14 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 

Britain her rebellious colonies — and Keppel, and Wilkes, and 
Sawbridge, and Bull, and Dunning, and Pratt, and Richmond, 

- — and such small politics. 

A little less facetious, and a great deal more obstreperous, 
5 was fine rattling, rattleheaded Plumer. He was descended — 
not in a right line, reader (for his lineal pretensions, like his 
personal, favoured a little of the sinister bend) — from the 
Plumers of Hertfordshire. So tradition gave him out; and 
certain family features not a little sanctioned the opinion. 

lo Certainly old Walter Plumer (his reputed author) had been 
a rake in his days, and visited much in Italy, and had seen the 
world. He was uncle, bachelor-uncle, to the fine old Whig still 
living, who has represented the county in so many successive 
parliaments, and has a fine old mansion near Ware. Walter 

15 flourished in George the Second's days, and was the same who 
was summoned before the House of Commons about a business 
of franks, with the old Duchess of Marlborough. You may read 
of it in Johnson's Life of Cave. Cave came off cleverly in that 
business. It is certain our Plumer did nothing to discounte- 

20 nance the rumour. He rather seemed pleased whenever it was, 
with all gentleness, insinuated. But, besides his family preten- 
sions, Plumer was an engaging fellow, and sang gloriously. 

Not so sweetly sang Plumer as thou sangest, mild, child-like, 
pastoral M ; a flute's breathing less divinely whispering 

25 than thy Arcadian melodies, when in tones worthy of Arden, 
thou didst chant that song sung by Amiens to the banished 
Duke, which proclaims the winter wind more lenient than for 

a man to be ungrateful. Thy sire was old surly M , the 

unapproachable churchwarden of Bishopsgate. He knew not 

30 what he did, when he begat thee, like spring, gentle offspring 
of blustering winter : — only unfortunate in thy ending, which 

should have been mild, conciliatory, swan-like. 

Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes rise up, but 
they must be mine in private : — already I have fooled the 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION I 5 

reader to the top of his bent ; — else could I omit that strange 
creature Woollett, who existed in trying the question, and . 
bought litigations ? — and still stranger, inimitable solemn Hep- 
worth, from whose gravity Newton might have deduced the 
law of gravitation. How profoundly would he nib a pen — 5 
with what deliberation would he wet a wafer ! 

But it is time to close — night's wheels are rattling fast over 
me — it is proper to have done with this solemn mockery. 

Reader, what if I have been playing with thee all this while 
— perad venture the very names, which I have summoned up 10 
before thee, are fantastic, insubstantial — like Henry Pimpernel, 
and old John Naps of Greece : • 

Be satisfied that something answering to them has had a 
being. Their importance is from the past. 



HI. OXFORD IN THE VACATION 

Casting a preparatory glance at the bottom of this article, as 15 
the wary connoisseur in prints, with cursory eye (which, while 
it reads, seems as though it read not), never fails to consult' 
the quis sculpsit in the corner, before he pronounces some rare 

piece to be a Vivares, or a Woollett methinks I hear you 

exclaim, reader, Who is Elia ? 20 

Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some half- 
forgotten humours of some old clerks defunct, in an old house 
of business, long since gone to decay, doubtless you have 
already set me down in your mind as one of the self-same 
college — a votary of the desk — a notched and cropt scrivener 25 
— one that sucks his sustenance, as certain sick people are 
said to do, through a quill. 

Well, I do agnize something of the sort. I confess that it is 
my humour, my fancy — in the forepart of the day, when the 
mind of your man of letters requires some relaxation — (and 3° 



1 6 OXFORD IN THE VACATION 

none better than such as at first sight seems most abhorrent 
from his beloved studies) — to while away some good hours of 
my time in the contemplation of indigos, cottons, raw silks, 
piece-goods, flowered or otherwise. In the first place . . . and 

5 then it sends you home with such increased appetite to your 
books . . . not to say, that your outside sheets, and waste 
wrappers of foolscap, do receive into them, most kindly and 
naturally, the impression of sonnets, epigrams, essays — so that 
the very parings of a counting-house are, in some sort, the 

lo settings up ,of an author. The enfranchised quill, that has 
plodded all the morning among the cart-rucks of figures and 
cyphers, frisks and curvets so at its ease over the flowery 
carpet-ground of a midnight dissertation. It feels its promo- 
tion. ... So that you see, upon the whole, the literary dignity of 

15 £/ia is very little, if at all, compromised in the condescension. 

Not that, in my anxious detail of the many commodities 

incidental to the life of a public office, I would be thought 

blind to certain flaws, which a cunning carper might be able to 

pick in this Joseph's vest. And here I must have leave, in the 

20 fulness of my soul, to regret the abolition, and doing-away with 
altogether, of those consolatory interstices, and sprinklings of 
freedom, through the four seasons, — the red-letter days, now 
become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days. There 
was Paul, and Stephen, and Barnabas — 

25 Andrew and John, men famous in old times ; 

— we were used to keep all their days holy, as long back as I 
was at school at Christ's. I remember their effigies, by the 
same token, in the old Basket Prayer-book. There hung Peter 
in his uneasy posture — holy Bartlemy in the troublesome act 

30 of flaying, after the famous Marsyas by Spagnoletti. — I hon- 
oured them all, and could almost have wept the defalcation of 
Iscariot — so much did we love to keep holy memories sacred : 

— only methought I a little grudged at the coalition of the 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION 1 7 

better /tide ^ith Simon — clubbing (as it were) their sanctities 
together, to make up one poor gaudy-day between them — as 
an economy unworthy of the dispensation. 

These were bright visitations in a scholar's and a clerk's life 
— "far off their coming shone." — I was as good as an alma- 5 
nac in those days. I could have told you such a saint' s-day " 
falls out next week, or the week after. Peradventure the 
Epiphany, by some periodical infelicity, would, once in six 
years, merge in a Sabbath. Now am I little better than one of 
the profane. Let me not be thought to arraign the wisdom 10 
of my civil superiors, who have judged the further observation 
of these holy tides to be papistical, superstitious. Only in a 
custom of such long standing, methinks, if their Holinesses the 
Bishops had, in decency, been first sounded — but I am wad- 
ing out of my depths. I am not the man to decide the limits 15 
of civil and ecclesiastical authority — I am plain Elia — no 
Selden, nor Archbishop Usher — though at present in the 
thick of their books, here in the heart of learning, under the 
shadow of the mighty Bodley. 

I can here play the gentleman, enact the student. To such 20 
a one as myself, who has been defrauded in his young years of 
the sweet food of academic institution, nowhere is so pleasant, 
to while away a few idle weeks at, as one or other of the 
Universities. Their vacation, too, at this time of the year, 
falls in so pat with ours. Here I can take my walks unmo- 25 
lested, and fancy myself of what degree or standing I please. 
I seem admitted ad eu?idem. I fetch up past opportunities. 
I can rise at the chapel-bell, and dream that it rings for me. 
In moods of humihty I can be a Sizar, or a Servitor. When 
the peacock vein rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner. In 30 
graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts. Indeed I do not 
think I am much unlike that respectable character. I have 
seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers in spectacles, 
drop a bow or curtsey, as I pass, wisely mistaking me for 



1 8 OXFORD IN THE VACATION 

something of the sort. I go about in black, which favours the 
notion. Only in Christ Church reverend quadrangle, I can be 
content to pass for nothing short of a Seraphic Doctor. 

The walks at these times are so much one's own, — the tall 
5 trees of Christ's, the groves of Magdalen ! The halls deserted, 
and with open doors, inviting one to slip in unperceived, and 
pay a devoir to some Founder, or noble or royal Benefactress 
(that should have been ours) whose portrait seems to smile 
upon their over-looked beadsman, and to adopt me for their 

10 own. Then, to take a peep in by the way at the butteries, and 
sculleries, redolent of antique hospitality : the immense caves 
of kitchens, kitchen fireplaces, cordial recesses ; ovens whose 
first pies were baked four centuries ago ; and spits which have 
cooked for Chaucer ! Not the meanest minister among the 

15 dishes but is hallowed to me through his imagination, and the 
Cook goes forth a Manciple. 

Antiquity ! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that, being 
nothing, art everything ! When thou wert, thou wert not anti- 
quity — then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter antiquity, 

20 as thou calledst it, to look back to with blind veneration ; thou 
thyself being to thyself fiat, jejune, modern / What mystery 
lurks in this retroversion? or what half Januses-^ are we, that 
cannot look forward with the same idolatry with which we for 
ever revert ! The mighty future is as nothing, being every- 

25 thing ! the past is everything, being nothing ! 

What were thy da?'k ages ? Surely the sun rose as brightly then 
as now, and man got him to his work in the morning. Why is it 
that we can never hear mention of them without an accompany- 
ing feeling, as though a palpable obscure had dimmed the face 

30 of things, and that our ancestors wandered to and fro groping ! 

Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what do most arride 

and solace me, are thy repositories of mouldering learning, 

thy shelves 

1 Januses of one face. — Sir Thomas Browne. 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION 1 9 

What a place to be in is an old library ! It seems as 
though all the souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed 
their labours to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in 
some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, 
to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon 5 
dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid 
their foliage ; and the odour of their old moth-scented cover- 
ings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples 
which grew amid the happy orchard. 

Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder repose of MSS.^ 10 
Those varice lectiones, so tempting to the more erudite palates, 
do but disturb and unsettle my faith. I am no Herculanean 
raker. The credit of the three witnesses might have slept unim- 
peached for me. I leave these curiosities to Porson, and to 
G. D. — whom, by the way, I found busy as a moth over some 15 
rotten archive, rummaged out of some seldom-explored press, 
in a nook at Oriel. With long poring, he is grown almost into 
a book. He stood as passive as one by the side of the 
old shelves. I longed to new-coat him in Russia, and assign 
him his place. He might have mustered for a tall Scapula. 20 

1 [There is something to me repugnant at any time in written hand. 
The text never seems determinate. Print settles it. I had thought 
of the Lycidas as of a full-grown beauty — as springing up with all its 
parts absolute — till, in an evil hour, I was shown the original copy 
of it, together with the other minor poems of its author, in the library 
of Trinity, kept like some treasure, to be proud of. I wish they had 
thrown them in the Cam, or sent them after the latter cantos of Spen- 
ser, into the Irish Channel. How it staggered me to see the fine 
things in their ore ! interlined, corrected ! as if their words were mortal, 
alterable, displaceable at pleasure ! as if they might have been other- 
wise, just as good! as if inspiration were made up of parts, and these 
fluctuating, successive, indifferent ! I will never go into the workshop 
of any great artist again, nor desire a sight of his picture till it is fairly 
off the easel ; no, not if Raphael were to be alive again, and painting 
another Galatea.] This note appeared in the London but was omitted 
by Lamb in the edition of 1823. — Ed. 



20 OXFORD IN THE VACATION 

D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats of learning. No 
inconsiderable portion of his moderate fortune, I apprehend, 
is consumed in journeys between them and Clifford's Inn — 
where, like a dove on the asp's nest, he has long taken up his 
5 unconscious abode, amid an incongruous assembly of attorneys' 
clerks, apparitors, promoters, vermin of the law, among whom 
he sits, " in calm and sinless peace." The fangs of the law 
pierce him not — the winds of litigation blow over his humble 
chambers — the hard sheriff's officer moves his hat as he passes 

10 — legal or illegal discourtesy touches him — none thinks of 
offering violence or injustice to him-^ — you would as soon 
" strike an abstract idea." 

D. has been engaged, he tells me, through a course of labori- 
ous years, in an investigation into all curious matter connected 

1 5 with the two Universities ; and has lately lit upon a MS. collec- 
tion of charters, relative to C , by which he hopes to settle 

some disputed points — particularly that long controversy 
between them as to priority of foundation. The ardour with 
which he engages in these liberal pursuits, I am afraid, has 

20 not met with all the encouragement it deserved, either here, 

or at C . Your caputs, and heads of Colleges, care less 

than anybody else about these questions. — Contented to suck 
the milky fountains of their Alma Maters, without inquiring 
into the venerable gentlewomen's years, they rather hold such 

1 [Violence or injustice certainly none, Mr. Elia. But you will 
acknowledge that the charming unsuspectingness of our friend has 
sometimes laid him. open to attacks, which, though savouring (we 
hope) more of waggery than of malice — such is our unfeigned respect 
for G. D. — might, we think, much better have been omitted. Such 

was that silly joke of L , who, at the time the question of the 

Scotch novels was first agitated, gravely assured our friend — who as 
gravely went about repeating it in all companies — that Lord Castle- 
reagh had acknowledged himself to be the author of Waverley ! — 
Note, not by Elia.] This note, appended to the original essay, was 
a hoax, L being Lamb himself. — Ed, 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION 21 

curiosities to be impertinent — unreverend. They have their 
good glebe lands in manu^ and care not much to rake into the 
title-deeds. I gather at least so much from other sources, for 
D. is not a man to complain. 

D. started like an unbroke heifer, when I interrupted him. 5 
A priori it was not very probable that we should have met in 
Oriel. But D. would have done the same, had I accosted 
him on the sudden in his own walks in Clifford's Inn, or in 
the Temple. In addition to a provoking shortsightedness (the 
effect of late studies and watchings at the midnight oil), D. is 10 
the most absent of men. He made a call the other morning 
at our friend M.^s in Bedford Square; and finding nobody at 
home, was ushered into the hall, where asking for pen and ink, 
with great exactitude of purpose he enters me his name in the 
book — which ordinarily lies about in such places, to record 15 
the failures of the untimely or unfortunate visitor — and takes 
his leave with many ceremonies, and professions of regret. 
Some two or three hours after, his walking destinies returned 
him into the same neighbourhood again, and again the quiet 
image of the fireside circle at M.''s — Mrs. M. presiding at 20 
it like a Queen Lar, with pretty A. S. at her side — striking 
irresistibly on his fancy, he makes another call (forgetting that 
they were " certainly not to return from the country before 
that day week ") and disappointed a second time, inquires for 
pen and paper as before : again the book is brought, and in 25 
the line just above that in which he is about to print his second 
name (his re-script) — his first name (scarce dry) looks out 
upon him like another Sosia, or as if a man should suddenly 
encounter his own duplicate ! The effect may be conceived. 
D. made many a good resolution against any such lapses in 30 
future. I hope he will not keep them too rigorously. 

For with G. D. — to be absent from the body, is sometimes 
(not to speak it profanely) to be present with the Lord. At 
th-a very time when, personally encountering thee, he passes 



22 OXFORD IN THE VACATION 

on with no recognition — or, being stopped, starts like a thing 
surprised — at that moment, reader, he is on Mount Tabor — 
or Parnassus — or co-sphered with Plato — or, with Harrington, 
framing " immortal commonwealths " — devising some plan of 
5 amelioration to thy country, or thy species — peradventure 
meditating some individual kindness or courtesy, to be done 
to thee thyself, the returning consciousness of which made him 
to start so guiltily at thy obtruded personal presence. 

[D. commenced life after a course of hard study in the 

lo house of " pure Emanuel," as usher to a knavish fanatic school- 
master at , at a salary of eight pounds per annum, with 

board and lodging. Of this poor stipend he never received 
above half in all the laborious years he served this man. He 
tells a pleasant anecdote, that when poverty, staring out at 

15 his ragged knees, has sometimes compelled him, against the 

modesty of his nature, to hint at arrears, Dr. would take 

no immediate notice, but after supper, when the school was 
called together to even-song, he would never fail to introduce 
some instructive homily against riches, and the corruption of 

20 the heart occasioned through the desire of them — ending 
with " Lord, keep thy servants, above all things, from the 
heinous sin of avarice. Having food and raiment, let us 
therewithal be content. Give me Agur's wish" — and the 
like — which, to the little auditory, sounded like a doctrine 

25 full of Christian prudence and simplicity, but to poor D. was 
a receipt in full for that quarter's demand at least. 

And D. has been under-working for himself ever since ; — 
drudging at low rates for unappreciating booksellers, — wasting 
his fine erudition in silent corrections of the classics, and in 

30 those unostentatious but solid services to learning which com- 
monly fall to the lot of laborious scholars, who have not the 
heart to sell themselves to the best advantage. He has 
pubhshed poems, which do not sell, because their character is 
unobtrusive, like his own, and because he has been too much 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 23 

absorbed in ancient literature to know what the popular mark 
in poetry is, even if he could have hit it. And, therefore, 
his verses are properly, what he terms them, crotchets ; volun- 
taries ; odes to liberty and spring; eifusions; little tributes 
and offerings, left behind him upon tables and window-seats 5 
at parting from friends' houses ; and from all the inns of 
hospitality, where he has been courteously (or but tolerably) 
received in his pilgrimage. If his muse of kindness halt a 
little behind the strong lines in fashion in this excitement- 
loving age, his prose is the best of the sort in the world, and 10 
exhibits a faithful transcript of his own healthy, natural mind, 
and cheerful, innocent tone of conversation.] 

D. is delightful anywhere, but he is at the best in such 
places as these. He cares not much for Bath. He is out of 
his element at Buxton, at Scarborough, or Harrogate. The 15 
Cam and the Isis are to him " better than all the waters of 
Damascus." On the Muses' hill he is happy, and good, as 
one of the Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains ; and when 
he goes about with you to show you the halls and colleges, 
you think you have with you the Interpreter of the House 20 
Beautiful. 



IV. CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY 

YEARS AGO 

In Mr. Lamb's "Works," published a year or two since, I 
find a magnificent eulogy on my old school,^ such as it was, 
or now appears to him to have been between the years 1782 
and 1789. It happens, very oddly, that my own standing 25 
at Christ's was nearly corresponding with his ; and, with all 
gratitude to him for his enthusiasm for the cloisters, I think 
he has contrived to bring together whatever can be said in 

1 " Recollections of Christ's Hospital." 



24 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 

praise of them, dropping all the other side of the argument 
most ingeniously. 

I remember L. at school ; and can well recollect that he 
had some peculiar advantages, which I and others of his school- 

5 fellows had not. His friends lived in town, and were near at 
hand ; and he had the privilege of going to see them, almost 
as often as he wished, through some invidious distinction, which 
was denied to us. The present worthy sub-treasurer to the 
Inner Temple can explain how that happened. He had his 

lo tea and hot rolls in the morning, while we were battening upon 
our quarter of a penny loaf — our crug — moistened with atten- 
uated small beer, in wooden piggins, smacking of the pitched 
leathern jack it was poured from. Our Monday's milk porritch, 
blue and tasteless, and the pease soup of Saturday, coarse and 

15 choking, were enriched for him with a slice of "extraordi- 
nary bread and butter," from the hot-loaf of the Temple. 
The Wednesday's mess of millet, somewhat less repugnant — 
(we had three banyan to four meat days in the week) — was 
endeared to his palate with a lump of double-refined, and a 

20 smack of ginger (to make it go down the more glibly) or the 
fragrant cinnamon. In lieu of our half-pickled Sundays, or 
quite fresh boiled beef on Thursdays (stroTig ^s car eqtdnd), 
with detestable marigolds floating in the pail to poison the 
broth — our scanty mutton crags on Fridays — and rather 

25 more savoury, but grudging, portions of the same flesh, rotten- 
roasted or rare, on the Tuesdays (the only dish which excited 
our appetites, and disappointed our stomachs, in almost equal 
proportion) — he had his hot plate of roast veal, or the more 
tempting griskin (exotics unknown to our palates), cooked in 

30 the paternal kitchen (a great thing) , and brought him daily 
by his maid or aunt ! I remember the good old relative (in 
whom love forbade pride) squatting down upon some odd stpne 
in a by-nook of the cloisters, disclosing the viands (of higher 
regale than those cates which the ravens ministered to the 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 25 

Tishbite) ; and the contending passions of L. at the unfolding. 
There was love for the bringer ; shame for the thing brought, 
and the manner of its bringing ; sympathy for those who 
were too many to share in it; and, at top of all, hunger 
(eldest, strongest of the passions !) predominant, breaking 5 
down the stony fences of shame, and awkwardness, and a 
troubling over-consciousness. 

I was a poor friendless boy. My parents, and those who 
should care for me, were far away. Those few acquaintances 
of theirs, which they could reckon upon being kind to me in 10 
the great city, after a little forced notice, which they had the 
grace to take of me on my first arrival in town, soon grew 
tired of my holiday visits. They seemed to them to recur 
too often, though I thought them few enough ; and, one after 
another, they all failed me, and I felt myself alone among six 15 
hundred playmates. 

O the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early home- 
stead ! The yearnings which I used to have towards it in those 
unfledged years ! How, in my dreams, would my native town 
(far in the west) come back, with its church, and trees, and 20 
faces ! How I would wake weeping, and in the anguish of 
my heart exclaim upon sweet Calne in Wiltshire ! 

To this late hour of my life, I trace impressions left by the 
recollection of those friendless holidays. The long warm days 
of summer never return but they bring with them a gloom from 25 
the haunting memory of those whole-day-leaves , when, by some 
strange arrangement, we were turned out, for the livelong day, 
upon our own hands, whether we had friends to go to, or none. 
I remember those bathing-excursions to the New- River, which 
L. recalls with such relish, better, I think, than he can — for 30 
he was a home-seeking lad, and did not much care for such 
water-pastimes : — How merrily we would sally forth into the 
fields ; and strip under the first warmth of the sun ; and wanton 
like young dace in the streams; getting us appetites for noon, 



26 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 

which those of us that were penniless (our scanty morning 
crust long since exhausted) had not the means of allaying- — 
while the cattle, and the birds, and the fishes, were at feed 
about us, and we had nothing to satisfy our cravings — the 
5 very beauty of the day, and the exercise of the pastime, and 
the sense of liberty, setting a keener edge upon them ! — How 
faint and languid, finally, we would return, towards night-fall, 
to our desired morsel, half-rejoicing, half-reluctant, that the 
hours of our uneasy liberty had expired ! 

10 It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling about 
the streets objectless — shivering at cold windows of print- 
shops, to extract a little amusement ; or haply, as a last resort, 
in the hope of a little novelty, to pay a fifty-times repeated 
visit (where our individual faces should be as well known to 

15 the warden as those of his own charges) to the Lions in the 
Tower — to whose levee, by courtesy immemorial, we had a 
prescriptive title to admission. 

L.'s governor (so we called the patron who presented us to 
the foundation) lived in a manner under his paternal roof. Any 

20 complaint which he had to make was sure of being attended to. 
This was understood at Christ's, and was an effectual screen 
to him against the severity of masters, or worse tyranny of the 
monitors. The oppressions of these young brutes are heart- 
sickening to call to recollection. I have been called out of 

25 my bed, and waked for the purpose, in the coldest winter 
nights — and this not once, but night after night — in my 
shirt, to receive the discipline of a leathern thong, with eleven 
other sufferers, because it pleased my callow overseer, when 
there has been any talking heard after we were gone to bed, 

30 to make the six last beds in the dormitory, where the youngest 
children of us slept, answerable for an offence they neither 
dared to commit, nor had the power to hinder. The same 
execrable tyranny drove the younger part of us from the fires, 
when our feet were perishing with snow ; and, under the cruelest 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 2/ 

penalties, forbade the indulgence of a drink of water, when we 
lay in sleepless summer nights, fevered with the season, and 
the day's sports. 

There was one H , who, I learned, in after-days, was 

seen expiating some maturer offence in the hulks. (Do I 5 
flatter myself in fancying that this might be the planter of 
that name, who suffered — at Nevis, I think, or St. Kits, — 
some few years since? My friend Tobin was the benevolent 
instrument of bringing him to the gallows.) This petty Nero 
actually branded a boy, who had offended him, with a red-hot 10 
i:-on ; and nearly starved forty of us, with exacting contribu- 
tions, to the one half of our bread, to pamper a young ass, 
which, incredible as it may seem, with the connivance of the 
nurse's daughter (a young flame of his) he had contrived to 
smuggle in, and keep upon the leads of the ward, as they 15 
called our dormitories. This game went on for better than 
a week, till the foolish beast, not able to fare well but he must 
cry roast meat — happier than Caligula's minion, could he 
have kept his own counsel — but, fooHsher, alas ! than any of 
his species in the fables — waxing fat, and kicking, in the ful- 20 
ness of bread, one unlucky minute would needs proclaim his 
good fortune to the world below ; and, laying out his simple 
throat, blew such a ram's horn blast, as (toppling down the 
walls of his own Jericho) set concealment any longer at defi- 
ance. The client was dismissed, with certain attentions, to 25 
Smithfield ; but I never understood that the patron underwent 
any censure on the occasion. This was in the stewardship of 
L.'s admired Perry. 

Under the %d.\n^ facile administration, can L. have forgotten 
the cool impunity with which the nurses used to carry away 30 
openly, in open platters, for their own tables, one out of two 
of every hot joint, which the careful matron had been seeing 
scrupulously weighed out for our dinners? These things were 
daily practised in that magnificent apartment, which L. (grown 



28 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 

connoisseur since, we presume) praises so highly for the grand 
paintings "by Verrio, and others," with which it is "hung round 
and adorned." But the sight of sleek well-fed blue-coat boys 
in pictures was, at that time, I believe, little consolatory to 
5 him, or us, the living ones, who saw the better part of our pro- 
visions carried away before our faces by harpies ; and ourselves 
reduced (with the Trojan in the hall of Dido) 

To feed our mind with idle portraiture. 

L. has recorded the repugnance of the school to gags, or the 
lo fat of fresh beef boiled ; and sets it down to some superstition. 
But these unctuous morsels are never grateful to young palates 
(children are universally fat-haters), and in strong, coarse, 
boiled meats, unsalted, are detestable, k. gag-eater in our time 
was equivalent to a ghoul, and held in equal detestation. 
15 suffered under the imputation : 

' Twas said. 



He ate strange flesh. 

He was observed, after dinner, carefully to gather up the rem- 
nants left at his table (not many, nor very choice fragments, 

20 you may credit me) — and, in an especial manner, these dis- 
reputable morsels, which he would convey away, and secretly 
stow in the settle that stood at his bed-side. None saw when 
he ate them. It was rumoured that he privately devoured 
them in the night. He was watched, but no traces of such 

25 midnight practices were discoverable. Some reported, that, 
on leave-days, he had been seen to carry out of the bounds a 
large blue check handkerchief, full of something. This then 
must be the accursed thing. Conjecture next was at work to 
imagine how he could dispose of it. Some said he sold it to 

30 the beggars. This belief generally prevailed. He went about 
moping. None spake to him. No one would play with him. 
He was excommunicated ; put out of the pale of the school. 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 29 

He was too powerful a boy to be beaten, but he underwent 
every mode of that negative punishment, which is more grievous 
than many stripes. Still he persevered. At length he was 
observed by two of his school-fellows, who were determined to 
get at the secret, and had traced him one leave-day for that 5 
■purpose, to enter a large worn-out building, such as there exist 
specimens of in Chancery Lane, which are let out to various 
scales of pauperism with open door, and a common staircase. 
After him they silently slunk in, and followed by stealth up four 
flights, and saw him tap at a poor wicket, which was opened 10 
by an aged woman, meanly clad. Suspicion was now ripened 
into certainty. The informers had secured their victim. They 
had him in their toils. Accusation was formally preferred, and 
retribution most signal was looked for. Mr. Hathaway, the 
then steward, for this happened a little after my time, with 15 
that patient sagacity which tempered all his conduct, deter- 
mined to investigate the matter, before he proceeded to sen- 
tence. The result was, that the supposed mendicants, the 
receivers or purchasers of the mysterious scraps, turned out to 

be the parents of , an honest couple come to decay, — 20 

whom this seasonable supply had, in all probability, saved from 
mendicancy ; and that this young stork, at the expense of his 
own good name, had all this while been only feeding the old 
birds ! The governors on this occasion, much to their honour, 

voted a present relief to the family of , and presented 25 

him with a silver medal. The lesson which the steward read 
upon RASH JUDGMENT, on the occasion of publicly delivering 

the medal to , I beheve, would not be lost upon his 

auditory. I had left school then, but I well remember . 

He was a tall, shambling youth, with a cast in his eye, 30 
not at all calculated to conciliate hostile prejudices. I have 
since seen him carrying a baker's basket. I think I heard 
he did not do quite so well by himself, as he had done by 
the old folks. 



30 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 

I was a hypochondriac lad ; and a sight of a boy in fetters, 
upon the day of my first putting on the blue clothes, was not 
exactly fitted to assuage the natural terrors of initiation. I was 
of tender years, barely turned of seven ; and had only read 
5 of such things in books, or seen them but in dreams. I was 
told he had rii7i away. This was the punishment for the first 
offence. As a novice I was soon after taken to see the dun- 
geons. These were little, square. Bedlam cells, where a boy 
could just he at his length upon straw and a blanket — a mat- 

lo tress, I think, was afterwards substituted — with a peep of 
hght, let in askance, from a prison-orifice at top, barely enough 
to read by. Here the poor boy was locked in by himself all 
day, without sight of any but the porter who brought him his 
bread and water — who might not speak to him ; or of the 

15 beadle, who came twice a week to call him out to receive his 
periodical chastisement, which was almost welcome, because it 
separated him for a brief interval from solitude : — and here 
he was shut up by himself of ?iights, out of the reach of any 
sound, to suffer whatever horrors the weak nerves, and super- 

20 stition incident to his time of life, might subject him to.-^ 
This was the penalty for the second offence. Wouldst thou 
like, reader, to see what became of him in the next degree ? 

The culprit, who had been a third time an offender, and 
whose expulsion was at this time deemed irreversible, was 

25 brought forth, as at some solemn auto dafe, arrayed in uncouth 
and most appalling attire — all trace of his late " watchet 
weeds " carefully effaced, he was exposed in a jacket, resem- 
bhng those which London lamplighters formerly delighted in, 

1 One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, accordingly, 
at length convinced the governors of the impolicy of this part of the 
sentence, and the midnight torture to the spirits was dispensed with. 
This fancy of dungeons for children was a sprout of Howard's brain, 
for which (saving the reverence due to Holy Paul), methinks, I could ^ 
willingly spit upon his statue. 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 3 1 

with a cap of the same. The effect of this divestiture was 
such as the ingenious devisers of it could have anticipated. 
With his pale and frighted features, it was as if some of those 
disfigurements in Dante had seized upon him. In this dis- 
guisement he was brought into the hall (^L.' s favourite state- 5 
room) where awaited him the whole number of his school- 
fellows, whose joint lessons and sports he was thenceforth to 
share no more ; the awful presence of the steward, to be seen 
for the last time ; of the executioner beadle, clad in his state 
robe for the occasion^ and of two faces more, of direr import, 10 
because never but in these extremities visible. These were 
governors ; two of whom, by choice, or charter, were always 
accustomed to officiate at these Ultima Supplicia ; not to miti- 
gate (so at least we understood it), but to enforce the utter- 
most stripe. Old Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter Aubert, I 15 
remember, were colleagues on one occasion, when the beadle 
turning rather pale, a glass of brandy was ordered to prepare 
him for the mysteries. The scourging was, after the old Roman 
fashion, long and stately. The lictor accompanied the criminal 
quite round the hall. We were generally too faint with attend- 20 
ing to the previous disgusting circumstances to make accurate 
report with our eyes of the degree of corporal suffering inflicted. 
Report, of course, gave out the back knotty and livid. After 
scourging, he was made over, in his San Benito, to his friends, 
if .he had any (but commonly such poor runagates were friend- 25 
less), or to his parish officer, who, to enhance the effect of 
the scene, had his station allotted to him on the outside of 
the hall gate. 

These solemn pageantries were not played off so often as to 
spoil the general mirth of the community. We had plenty 30 
of exercise and recreation after school hours ; and, for my- 
self, I must confess, that I was never happier, than in them. 
The Upper and the Lower Grammar Schools were held in the 
same room ; and an imaginary line only divided their bounds. 



32 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 

Their character was as different as that of the inhabitants on 
the two sides of the Pyrenees. The Rev. James Boyer was 
the Upper Master ; but the Rev. Matthew P'ield presided over 
that portion of the apartment of which I had the good fortmie 
5 to be a member. We Hved a hfe as careless as birds. We 
talked and did just what we pleased, and nobody molested us. 
We carried an accidence, or a grammar, for form ; but, for any 
trouble it gave us, we might take two years in getting through 
the verbs deponent, and another two in forgetting all that we 

10 had learned about them. There was now and then the for- 
mality of saying a lesson, but if you had not learned it, a brush 
across the shoulders (just enough to disturb a fly) was the sole 
remonstrance. Field never used the rod ; and in truth he 
wielded the cane with no great good-will — holding it " like a 

15 dancer." It looked in his hands rather like an emblem, than an 
instrument of authority ; and an emblem, too, he was ashamed 
of. He was a good, easy man, that did not care to ruffle his 
own peace, nor perhaps set any great consideration upon the 
value of juvenile time. He came among us, now and then, but 

20 often stayed away whole days from us ; and when he came, 
it made no difference to us — he had his private room to retire 
to, the short time he stayed, to be out of the sound of our noise. 
Our mirth and uproar went on. We had classics of our own, 
without being beholden to " insolent Greece or haughty Rome," 

25 that passed current among us — Peter Wilkins — the Adven- 
tures of the Hon. Capt. Robert Boyle — the Fortunate Blue 
Coat Boy — and the like. Or we cultivated a turn for mechanic 
or scientific operations ; making little sun-dials of paper ; or 
weaving those ingenious parentheses, called cat-cradles ; or mak- 

30 ing dry peas to dance upon the end of a tin pipe ; or studying the 
art mihtary over that laudable game '' French and Enghsh," 
and a hundred other such devices to pass away the time — 
mixing the useful with the agreeable — as would have made the 
souls of Rousseau and John Locke chuckle to have seen us. 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 33 

Matthew Field belonged to that class of modest divines who 
affect to mix in equal proportion the geiitkman, the scholar^ 
and the Christian ; but, I know not how, the first ingredient 
is generally found to be the predominating dose in the com- 
position. He was engaged in gay parties, or with his courtly 5 
bow at some episcopal levee, when he should have been attend- 
ing upon us. He had for many years the classical charge of 
a hundred children, during the four or five first years of their 
education ; and his very highest form seldom proceeded further 
than two or three of the introductory fables of Phaedrus. How 10 
things were suffered to go on thus, I cannot guess. Boyer, 
who was the proper person to have remedied these abuses, 
always affected, perhaps felt, a delicacy in interfering in a prov- 
ince not strictly his own. I have not been without my suspi- 
cions, that he was not altogether displeased at the contrast we 15 
presented to his end of the school. We were a sort of Helots 
to his young Spartans. He would sometimes, with ironic defer- 
ence, send to borrow a rod of the Under Master, and then, with 
sardonic grin, observe to one of his upper boys, "how neat and 
fresh the twigs looked." While his pale students were battering 20 
their brains over Xenophon and Plato, with a silence as deep as 
that enjoined by the Samite, we were enjoying ourselves at our 
ease in our little Goshen. We saw a little into the secrets of his 
discipline, and the prospect did but the more reconcile us to 
our lot. His thunders rolled innocuous for us ; his storms came 25 
near, but never touched us ; contrary to Gideon's miracle, while 
all around were drenched, our fleece was dry.^ His boys turned 
out the better scholars ; we, I suspect, have the advantage in 
temper. His pupils cannot speak of him without something 
of terror allaying their gratitude ; the remembrance of Field 30 
comes back with all the soothing images of indolence, and 
summer slumbers, and work like play, and innocent idleness, 
and Elysian exemptions, and life itself a " playing holiday." 

1 Cowlev. 



34 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 

Though sufficiently removed from the jurisdiction of Boyer, 
we were near enough (as I have said) to understand a Httle of 
his system. We occasionally heard sounds of the Ululantes, 
and caught glances of Tartarus. B. was a rabid pedant. His 
5 English style was cramped to barbarism. His Easter anthems 
(for his duty obliged him to those periodical flights) were 
grating as scrannel pipes.^ He would laugh, ay, and heartily, 
but then it must be at Flaccus's quibble about Rex — or at 
the tristis, severitas in vultu, or inspicere in patinas, of Terence 

lo — thin jests, which at their first broaching could hardly have 
had vis enough to move a Roman muscle. He had two wigs, 
both pedantic, but of different omen. The one serene, smil- 
ing, fresh powdered, betokening a mild day. The other, an 
old discoloured, unkempt, angry caxon, denoting frequent and 

15 bloody execution. Woe to the school, when he made his 
morning appearance in Mi^passy, ox passionate wig. No comet 
expounded surer. J. B. had a heavy hand. I have known 
him double his knotty fist at a poor trembling child (the 
maternal milk hardly dry upon its lips) with a " Sirrah, do you 

20 presume to set your wits at me ? " Nothing was more common 
than to see him make a headlong entry into the school-room, 
from his inner recess, or library, and, with turbulent eye, sin- 
gling out a lad, roar out, " Od 's my life, sirrah" (his favourite 
adjuration), " I have a great mind to whip you," — then, with 

25 as sudden a retracting impulse, fling back into his lair — and 
after a cooling lapse of some minutes (during which all but the 
culprit had totally forgotten the context) drive headlong out 

1 In this and everything B. was the antipodes of his coadjutor. 
While the former was digging his brains for crude anthems, worth a pig- 
nut, F. would be recreating his gentlemanly fancy in the more flowery 
walks of the Muses. A little dramatic effusion of his, under the name of 
Vertumnus and Pomona, is not yet forgotten by the chroniclers of that 
sort of literature. It was accepted by Garrick, but the town did not 
give it their sanction. B. used to say of it, in a way of half -compliment, 
half -irony, that it was too classical for representation. 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 35 

again, piecing out his imperfect sense, as if it had been some 
Devil's Litany, with the expletory yell — "<2;2^/will, too.'' 
In his gentler moods, when the rabidus furor \i2js, assuaged, he 
had resort to an ingenious method, peculiar, for what I have 
heard, to himself, of whipping the boy, and reading the Debates, 5 
at the same time ; a paragraph, and a lash between ; which in 
those times, when parliamentary oratory was most at a height 
and flourishing in these realms, was not calculated to impress 
the patient with a veneration for the diffuser graces of rhetoric. 

Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was known to fall 10 
ineffectual from his hand — when droll squinting W , hav- 
ing been caught putting the inside of the master's desk to 
a use for which the architect had clearly not designed it, to 
justify himself, with great simplicity averred, that he did 7iot 
know that the thing had been forewarned. This exquisite 15 
irrecognition of any law antecedent to the oral or declara- 
tory, struck so irresistibly upon the fancy of all who heard 
it (the pedagogue himself not excepted) that remission was 
unavoidable. 

L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as an instructor. 20 
Coleridge, in his Literary Life, has pronounced a more intel- 
ligible and ample encomium on them. The author of the 
Country Spectator doubts not to compare him with the ablest 
teachers of antiquity. Perhaps we cannot dismiss him better 

than with the pious ejaculation of C when he heard that 25 

his old master was on his death-bed — " Poor J. B. — may all 
his faults be forgiven ; and may he be wafted to bHss by httle 
cherub boys, all head and wings, with no bottoms to reproach 
his sublunary infirmities." 

Under him were many good and sound scholars bred. First 30 
Grecian of my time was Lancelot Pepys Stevens, kindest of 
boys and men, since Co-grammar-master (and inseparable com- 
panion) with Dr. T e. What an edifying spectacle did 

this brace of friends present to those who remembered the 



36 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 

antisocialities of their predecessors ! You never met the one 
by chance in the street without a wonder, which was quickly 
dissipated by the ahuost immediate sub-appearance of the other. 
Generally arm in arm, these kindly coadjutors lightened for 

5 each other the toilsome duties of their profession, and when, in 
advanced age, one found it convenient to retire, the other was 
not long in discovering that it suited him to lay down the 
fasces also. Oh, it is pleasant, as it is rare, to find the same 
arm linked in yours at forty, which at thirteen helped it to 

10 turn over the Cicero De Amicitid, or some tale of Antique 
Friendship, which the young heart even then was burning to 

anticipate ! Co-Grecian with S. was Th , who has since 

executed with ability various diplomatic functions at the North- 
ern courts. Th was a tall, dark, saturnine youth, spar- 

15 ing of speech, with raven locks. Thomas Fanshaw Middleton 
followed him (now Bishop of Calcutta), a scholar and a gen- 
tleman in his teens. He has the reputation of an excellent 
critic ; and is author (besides the Country Spectator) of a 1 
Treatise on the Greek Article, against Sharpe. M. is said to 

20 bear his mitre high in India, where the regfii novitas (I dare 
say) sufficiently justifies the bearing. A humihty quite as prim- 
itive as that of Jewel or Hooker might not be exactly fitted to 
impress the minds of those Anglo- Asiatic diocesans with a rever- 
ence for home institutions, and the church which those fathers 

25 watered. The manners of M. at school, though firm, were mild 
and unassuming. Next to M. (if not senior to him) was Rich- 
ards, author of the Aboriginal Britons, the most spirited of the 
Oxford Prize Poems ; a pale, studious Grecian. Then followed 
poor S , ill-fated M ! of these the Muse is silent. 

20 Finding some of Edward's race 

Unhappy, pass their annals by. | 

Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the day- 
spring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before thee 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 37 

— the dark pillar not yet turned — Samuel Taylor Coleridge 

— Logician, Metaphysician, Bard ! — How have I seen the 
casual passer through the Cloisters stand still, entranced with 
admiration (while he weighed the disproportion between the 
speech and the garb of the young Mirandula), to hear thee 5 
unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of 
Jamblichus, or Plotinus (for even in those years thou waxedst 
not pale at such philosophic draughts), or reciting Homer in 
his Greek, or Pindar while the walls of the old Grey Friars 
re-echoed to the accents of the i?ispired charity-boy I — Many 10 
were the " wit-combats " (to dally awhile with the words of old 

Fuller) between him and C. V. Le G , " which two I 

behold like a Spanish great galleon, and an English man-of- 
war; Master Coleridge, like the former, was built far higher 

in learning, solid, but slow in his performances. C. V. L., with 15 
the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, 
could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all 
winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention." 

Nor shalt thou, their compeer, be quickly forgotten, Allen, 
with the cordial smile, and still more cordial laugh, with which 20 
thou wert wont to make the old Cloisters shake, in thy cog- 
nition of some poignant jest of theirs ; or the anticipation of 
some more material, and, peradventure, practical one, of thine 
own. Extinct are those smiles, with that beautiful counte- 
nance, with which (for thou wert the Nireiis for7nosus of the 25 
school), in the days of thy maturer waggery, thou didst disarm 
the wrath of infuriated town-damsel, who, incensed by provok- 
ing pinch, turning figress-like round, suddenly converted by 

thy angel-look, exchanged the half- formed terrible " bl ," 

for a gentler greeting — " bless thy handsome face P'' 30 

Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, and the friends 

of Elia — the junior Le G and F ; who impelled, 

the former by a roving temper, the latter by too quick a sense 
of neglect — ill capable of enduring the slights poor Sizars are 



38 THE TWO RACES OF MEN 

sometimes subject to in our seats of learning — exchanged 
their Alma Mater for the camp ; perishing one by climate, 

and one on the plains of Salamanca : — Le G , sanguine, 

volatile, sweet-natured ; F , dogged, faithful, anticipative 

5 of insult, warm-hearted, with something of the old Roman 
height about him. 

Fine, frank-hearted Fr , the present master of Hertford, 

with Marmaduke T , mildest of Missionaries — and both 

my good friends still — close the catalogue of Grecians in my 
10 tim^e. ' 

V. THE TWO RACES OF MEN 

The human species, according to the best theory I can form 
of it, is composed of two distinct races, the fneii who bor?'0'w, 
and the men who lend. To these two original diversities may 
be reduced all those impertinent classifications of Gothic and 

15 Celtic tribes, white men, black men, red men. All the dwell- 
ers upon earth, " Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites," flock 
hither, and do naturally fall in with one or other of these 
primary distinctions. The infinite superiority of the former, 
which I choose to designate as the great race, is discernible in 

20 their figure, port, and a certain instinctive sovereignty. The 
latter are born degraded. " He shall serve his brethren." 
There is something in the air of one of this cast, lean and 
suspicious ; contrasting with the open, trusting, generous man- 
ners of the other. 

25 Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of all ages 
— Alcibiades — Falstaff — Sir Richard Steele — our late incom- 
parable Brinsley — what a family likeness in all four ! 

What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower ! what 
rosy gills ; what a beautiful reliance on Providence doth he 

30 manifest, — taking no more thought than liHes ! What con- 
tempt for money, — accounting it (yours and mine especially) 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN 39 

no better than dross ! What a Hberal confoundmg of those 
pedantic distinctions of meum and tuutn ! or rather, what a 
noble simphfication of language (beyond Tooke), resolving 
these supposed opposites into one clear, intelligible pronoun 
adjective! — What near approaches doth he make to the 5 
primitive community, — to the extent of one-half of the prin- 
cipal at least ! — 

He is the true taxer " who calleth all the world up to be 
taxed "j and the distance is as vast between him and one of 
us, as subsisted betwixt the Augustan Majesty and the poorest 10 
obolary Jew that paid it tribute-pittance at Jerusalem ! — His 
exactions, too, have such a cheerful, voluntary air ! So far 
removed from your sour parochial or state-gatherers, — those 
ink-horn varlets, who carry their want of welcome in their 
faces ! He cometh to you with a smile and troubleth you i^ 
with no receipt ; confining himself to no set season. Every 
day is his Candlemas, or his Feast of Holy Michael. He 
applieth the lene tormentum of a pleasant look to your purse, 
— which to that gentle warmth expands her silken leaves, as 
naturally as the cloak of the traveller, for which sun and wind 20 
contended ! He is the true Propontic which never ebbeth ! 
The sea which taketh handsomely at each man's hand. In 
vain the victim, whom he delighteth to honour, struggles with 
destiny ; he is in the net. Lend therefore cheerfully, O man 
ordained to lend — that thou lose not in the end, with thy 25 
worldly penny, the reversion promised. Combine not pre- 
posterously in thine own person the penalties of Lazarus and of 
Dives ! — but, when thou seest the proper authority coming, 
meet it smilingly, as it were half-way. Come, a handsome 
sacrifice ! See how light he makes of it ! Strain not courtesies 30 
with a noble enemy. 

Reflections like the foregoing were forced upon my mind by 
the death of my old friend, Ralph Bigod, Esq., who departed 
this life on Wednesday evening ; dying, as he had lived, 



40 THE TWO RACES OF MEN 

without much trouble. He boasted himself a descendant from 
mighty ancestors of that name, who heretofore held ducal 
dignities in this realm. In his actions and sentiments he 
belied not the stock to which he pretended. Early in life 
5 he found himself invested with ample revenues ; which with 
that noble disinterestedness which I have noticed as inherent 
in men of the great race^ he took almost immediate measures 
entirely to dissipate and bring to nothing : for there is some- 
thing revolting in the idea of a king holding a private purse ; 
lo and the thoughts of Bigod were all regal. Thus furnished by 
the very act of disfurnishment ; getting rid of the cumbersome 
luggage of riches, more apt (as one sings) 

To slacken virtue, and abate her edge, 

Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise, 

15 he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great enterprise, 
" borrowing and to borrow ! " 

In his periegesis, or triumphant progress throughout this 
island, it has been calculated that he laid a tithe part of the 
inhabitants under contribution. I reject this estimate as 

20 greatly exaggerated : but having had the honour of accom- 
panying my friend, divers times, in his perambulations about 
this vast city, I own I was greatly struck at first with the prodi- 
gious number of faces we met, who claimed a sort of respectful 
acquaintance with us. He was . one day so obliging as to 

25 explain the phenomenon. It seems, these were his tributaries ; 
feeders of his exchequer ; gentlemen, his good friends (as he was 
pleased to express himself), to whom he had occasionally been 
beholden for a loan. Their multitudes did no way disconcert 
him. He rather took a pride in numbering them ; and, with 

30 Comus, seemed pleased to be " stocked with so fair a herd." 
With such sources, it was a wonder how he contrived to 
keep his treasury always empty. He did it by force of an 
aphorism, which he had often in his mouth, that " money kept 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN 4 1 

longer than three days stinks." So he made use of it while it 
was fresh. A good part he drank away (for he was an excel- 
lent toss-pot), some he gave away, the rest he threw away, 
literally tossing and hurling it violently from him — as boys 
do burrs, or as if it had been infectious, — into ponds, or 5 
ditches, or deep holes, — inscrutable cavities of the earth : — 
or he would bury it (where he would never seek it again) by 
a river's side under some bank, which (he would facetiously 
observe) paid no interest — but out away from him it must go 
peremptorily, as Hagar's offspring into the wilderness, while 10 
it was sweet. He never missed it. The streams were peren- 
nial which fed* his fisc. When new supplies became neces- 
sary, the first person that had the felicity to fall in with him, 
friend or stranger, was sure to contribute to the deficiency. 
For Bigod had an undeniable way with him. He had a cheer- 15 
ful, open exterior, a quick jovial eye, a bald forehead, just 
touched with grey {cana fides). He anticipated no excuse, 
and found none. And, waiving for a while my theory as to 
the great race, I would put it to the most untheorizing reader, 
who may at times have disposable coin in his pocket, whether 20 
it is not more repugnant to the kindliness of his nature to 
refuse such a one as I am describing, than to say no to a poor 
petitionary rogue (your bastard borrower), who, by his mump- 
ing visnomy, tells you, that he expects nothing better ; and 
therefore, whose preconceived notions and expectations you 25 
do in reality so much less shock in the refusal. 

When I think of this man ; his fiery glow of heart ; his 
swell of feeling ; how magnificent, how ideal he was ; how 
great at the midnight hour ; and when I compare with him the 
companions with whom I have associated since, I grudge the 30 
saving of a few idle ducats, and think that I am fallen into 
the society of lenders^ and little men. 

To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in leather 
covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a class of alienators 



42 THE TWO RACES OF MEN 

more formidable than that which I have touched upon ; I 
mean your borrowers of books — those mutilators of col- 
lections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators 
of odd volumes. There is Comberbatch, matchless in his 
5 depredations ! 

That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great 
eye-tooth knocked out — (ypu are now with me in my little 
back study in Bloomsbury, reader !) — with the huge Switzer- 
like tomes on each side (like the Guildhall giants, in their 

lo reformed posture, guardant of nothing) once held the tallest 
of my folios. Opera Bonaventurce , choice and massy divinity, 
to which its two supporters (school divinity also, but of a 
lesser calibre, — Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas) showed but 
as dwarfs, itself an Ascapart ! — that Comberbatch abstracted 

15 upon the faith of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I 
confess, for me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that " the 
title to property in a book " (my Bonaventure, for instance) 
" is in exact ratio to the claimant's powers of understanding 
and appreciating the same." Should he go on acting upon 

20 this theory, which of our shelves is safe? 

The slight vacuum in the left-hand case — two shelves from 
the ceiling — scarcely distinguishable but by the quick eye 
of a loser — was whilom the commodious resting-place of 
Browne on Urn Burial. C. will hardly allege that he knows 

25 more about that treatise than I do, who introduced it to him, 
and was indeed the first (of the moderns) to discover its 
beauties — but so have I known a foolish lover to praise his 
mistress in the presence of a rival more qualified to carry her 
off than himself. — Just below, Dodsley's dramas want their 

30 fourth volume, where Vittoria Corombona is ! The remain- 
der nine are as distasteful as Priam's refuse sons, when the 
fates borrowed Hector. Here stood the Anatomy of Melan- 
choly, in sober state. — There loitered the Complete Angler ; 
quiet as in hfe, by some stream side. — In yonder nook, John 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN 43 

Buncle, a widower-volume, with " eyes closed," mourns his 
ravished mate. 

One justice I must do my friend, that if he sometimes, like 
the sea, sweeps away a treasure, at another time, sea- like, he 
throws up as rich an equivalent to match it. I have a small 5 
under-collection of this nature (my friend's gatherings in his 
various calls), picked up, he has forgotten at what odd places, 
and deposited with as little memory as mine. I take in these 
orphans, the twice-deserted. These proselytes of the gate are 
welcome as the true Hebrews. There they stand in con- 10 
junction ; natives, and naturalized. The latter seem as little 
disposed to inquire out their true lineage as I am. — I charge 
no warehouse-room for these deodands, nor shall ever put 
myself to the ungentlemanly trouble of advertising a sale of 
them to pay expenses. 15 

To lose a volume to C. carries some sense and meaning 
in it. You are sure that he will make one hearty meal on your 
viands, if he can give no account of the platter after it. But 
what moved thee, wayward, spiteful K., to be so importunate 
to carry oiT with thee, in spite of tears and adjurations to thee 20 
to forbear, the Letters of that princely woman, the thrice noble 
Margaret Newcastle ? — knowing at the time, and knowing 
that I knew also, thou most assuredly wouldst never turn over 
one leaf of the illustrious folio : — what but the mere spirit 
of contradiction, and childish love of getting the better of thy 25 
friend ? — Then, worst cut of all ! to transport it with thee to 
the Galilean land — 

Unworthy land to harbour such a sweetness, 

A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt, 

Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's wonder! 30 

— hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of jests and 
fancies, about thee, to keep thee merry, even as thou keepest 
all companies with thy quips and mirthful tales? — Child of 



44 NEW YEAR'S EVE 

the Green-room, it was unkindly done of thee. Thy wife, 
too, that part-French, better-part-Enghshwoman ! — that she 
could fix upon no other treatise to bear away, in kindly token 
of remembering us, than the works of Fulke Greville, Lord 
5 Brook — of which no Frenchman, nor woman of France, Italy, 
or England, was ever by nature constituted to comprehend a 
tittle ! Was there not Zimmermaiin on Solitude ? 

Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate collection, 
be shy of showing it ; or if thy heart overfloweth to lend them, 

lo lend thy books; but let it be to such a one as S. T. C. — he 
will return them (generally anticipating the time appointed) 
with usury ; enriched with annotations, tripling their value. 
I have had experience. Many are these precious MSS. of his 
— (in matter oftentimes, and almost in quantity not unfre- 

15 quently, vying with the originals) — in no. very clerkly hand — 
legible in my Daniel ; in old Burton ; in Sir Thomas Browne ; 
and those abstruser cogitations of the Greville, now, alas ! wan- 
dering in Pagan lands, — I counsel thee, shut not thy heart, 
nor thy library, against S. T. C. 



VI. NEW YEAR'S EVE 

20 Every man hath two birthdays : two days, at least, in every 
year, which set him upon revolving the lapse of time, as it 
affects his mortal duration. The one is that which in an 
especial manner, he termeth his. In the gradual desuetude 
of old observances, this custom of solemnizing our proper 

25 birthday hath nearly passed away, or is left to children, who 
reflect nothing at all about the matter, nor understand any- 
thing in it beyond cake and orange. But the birth of a New 
Year is of an interest too wide to be pretermitted by king 
or cobbler. No one ever regarded the First of January 

30 with indifference. It is that from which all date their time. 



NEW YEAR'S EVE 45 

and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our 
common Adam. 

Of all sound of all bells — (bells, the music nighest border- 
ing upon heaven) — most solemn and touching is the peal 
which rings out the Old Year. I never hear it without a 5 
gathering-up of my mind to a concentration of all the images 
that have been diffused over the past twelvemonth ; all I have 
done or suffered, performed or neglected — in that regretted 
time. I begin to know its worth, as when a person dies. It 
takes a personal colour ; nor was it a poetical flight in a 10 
contemporary, when he exclaimed 

I saw the skirts of the departing Year. 

It is no more than what in sober sadness every one of us 
seems to be conscious of, in that awful leave-taking. I am 
sure I felt it, and all felt it with me, last night; though some 15 
of my companions affected rather to manifest an exhilaration at 
the birth of the coming year, than any very tender regrets for 
the decease of its predecessor. But I am none of those who 

Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. 

I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties ; new books, 20 
new faces, new years, — from S9me mental twist which makes 
it difficult in me to face the prospective. I have almost ceased 
to hope ; and am sanguine only in the prospects of other 
(former) years. I plunge into foregone visions and conclu- 
sions. I encounter pell-mell with past disappointments. I am 25 
armour-proof against old discouragements. I forgive, or over- 
come in fancy, old adversaries. I play over again for love, 
as the gamesters phrase it, games, for which I once paid so 
dear. I would scarce now have any of those untoward acci- 
dents and events of my life reversed. I would no more 30 
alter them than the incidents of some well-contrived novel. 
Methinks, it is better that I should have pined away seven of 



46 NEW YEAR'S EVE 

my goldenest years, when I was thrall to the fair hair, and 
fairer eyes, of Alice W n, than that so passionate a love- 
adventure should be lost. It was better that our family 
should have missed that legacy, which old Doi'rell cheated us 
5 of, than that I should have at this moment two thousand 
pounds in banco, and be without the idea of that specious old 
rogue. 

In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity to look 
back upon those early days. Do I advance a paradox, when 

lo I say that, skipping over the intervention of forty years, a 
man may have leave to love himself, without the imputation 
of self-love? 

If I know aught of myself, no one whose mind is introspec- 
tive — and mine is painfully so — can have a less respect for 

15 his present identity, than I have for the man Elia. I know 
him to be light, and vain, and humoursome ; a notorious . . . ; 
addicted to ... ; averse from counsel, neither taking it, nor 
offering it ; — . . . besides ; a stammering buffoon ; what you 
will ; lay it on, and spare not ; I subscribe to it all, and much 

20 more, than thou canst be willing to lay at his door — but 
for the child Elia — that "other me," there, in the background 

— I must take leave to cherish the remembrance of that young 
master — with as little reference, I protest, to this stupid 
changeling of five-and-forty, as if it had been a child of 

25 some other house, and not of my parents. I can cry over its 
patient small-pox at five, and rougher medicaments. I can 
lay its poor fevered head upon the sick pillow at Christ's, and 
wake with it in surprise at the gentle posture of maternal 
tenderness hanging over it, that unknown had watched its sleep. 

30 I know how it shrank from any the least colour of falsehood. 

— God help thee, Elia, how art thou changed ! Thou art 
sophisticated. — I know how honest, how courageous (for a 
weakling) it was — how rehgious, how imaginative, how hope- 
ful ! From what have I not fallen, if the child I remember 



NEW YEAR'S EVE 47 

was indeed myself, ■ — and not some dissembling guardian, pre- 
senting a false identity, to give the rule to my unpractised 
steps, and regulate the tone of my moral being ! 

That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of sympathy, in 
such retrospection, may be the symptom of some sickly idio- 5 
syncrasy. Or is it owing to another cause ; simply, that being 
without wife or family, I have not learned to project myself 
enough out of myself; and having no offspring of my own 
to dally with, I turn back upon memory, and adopt my own 
early idea, as my heir and favourite? If these speculations 10 
seem fantasdcal to thee, reader — (a busy man, perchance), if 
I tread out of the way of thy sympathy, and am singularly 
conceited only, I retire, impenetrable to ridicule, under the 
phantom cloud of Elia. 

The elders, with whom I was brought up, were of a character 15 
not likely to let slip the sacred observance of any old institu- 
tion : and the ringing out of the Old Year was kept by them 
with circumstances of peculiar ceremony. — In those days the 
sound of those midnight chimes, though it seemed to raise 
hilarity in all around me, never failed to bring a train of 20 
pensive imagery into my fancy. Yet I then scarce conceived 
what it meant, or thought of it as a reckoning that concerned 
me. Not childhood alone, but the young man till thirty, 
never feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it indeed, 
and, if need were, he could preach a homily on the fragility of 25 
life ; but he brings it not home to himself, any more than in a 
hot June we can appropriate to our imagination the freezing 
days of December. But now, shall I confess a truth ? — I feel 
these audits but too powerfully. I begin to count the probabili- 
ties of my duration, and to grudge at the expenditure of moments 30 
and shortest periods, like miser's farthings. In proportion as 
the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count upon their 
periods and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke 
of the great wheel. I am not content to pass away " like a 



48 NEW YEAR'S EVE 

weaver's shuttle." Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten 
the unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried 
with the tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity ; and 
reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with 
5 this green earth ; the face of town and country ; the unspeak- 
able rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would 
set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the 
age to which I am arrived ; I, and my friends : to be no younger, 
no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by 

10 age ; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave. — 
Any alteration, on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging, 
puzzles and discomposes me. My household gods plant a 
terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up without blood. They 
do not willingly seek Lavinian shores. A new state of being 

15 staggers me. 

Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer 
holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices 
of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and 
candle-hght, and fireside conversations, and innocent vanities, 

20 and jests, and irony itself — do these things go out with life? 
Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when you are 
pleasant with him ? 

And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios ! must I part 
with the intense delight of having you (huge armfuls) in my 

25 embraces? Must knowledge come to me, if it come at all, by 
some awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer by this 
familiar process of reading ? 

Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling indica- 
tions which point me to them here, — the recognizable face — 

30 the " sweet assurance of a look " ? — 

In winter this intolerable disinclination to dying — to give it 
its mildest name — does more especially haunt and beset me. 
In a genial August noon, beneath a sweltering sky, death is 
almost problematic. At those times do such poor snakes as 



NEW YEAR'S EVE 49 

myself enjoy an immortality. Then we expand and burgeon. 
Then are we as strong again, as valiant again, as wise again, 
and a great deal taller. The blast that nips and shrinks me, 
puts me in thoughts of death. All things alhed to the insub- 
stantial, wait upon that master feeling ; cold, numbness, dreams, 5 
perplexity ; moonlight itself, with its shadowy and spectral 
appearances, — that cold ghost of the sun, or Phoebus's sickly 
sister, like that innutritions one denounced in the Canticles : — 
I am none of her minions — I hold with the Persian. 

Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, brings death 10 
into my mind. All partial evils, like humours, run into that 
capital plague-sore. — I have heard some profess an indiffer- 
ence to life. Such hail the end of their existence as a port 
of refuge : and speak of the grave as of some soft arms, in 
which they may slumber as on a pillow. Some have wooed 15 
death — but out upon thee, I say, thou foul, ugly phantom ! 
I detest, abhor, execrate, and (with Friar John) give thee to 
six-score thousand devils, as in no instance to be excused 
or tolerated, but shunned as a universal viper ; to be branded, 
proscribed, and spoken evil of ! In no way can I be brought to 20 
digest thee, thou thin, melancholy Ffivation, or more frightful 
and confounding Positive f 

Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of thee, are 
altogether frigid and insulting, like thyself. For what satis- 
faction hath a man, that he shall " lie down with kings and 25 
emperors in death," who in his lifetime never greatly coveted 
the society of such bedfellows? — or, forsooth, that "so shall 
the fairest face appear?" — why, to comfort me, must Alice 

W n be a goblin? More than all, I conceive disgust at 

those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon 30 
your ordinary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon 
himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that " such 
as he now is, I must shortly be." Not so shortly, friend, per- 
haps as thou imaginest. In the meantime I am alive. I move 



50 NEW YEAR'S EVE 

about. I am worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters ! Thy 
New Years' Days are past. I survive, a jolly candidate for 
1 82 1. Another cup of wine — and while that turn-coat bell, 
that just now mournfully chanted the obsequies of 1820 
5 departed, with changed notes lustily rings in a successor, let us 
attune to its peal the song made on a like occasion, by hearty, 
cheerful Mr. Cotton. 

The New Year 

Hark ! the cock crows, and yon bright star 

Tells us the day himself s not far; 
10 And see where, breaking from the night, 

He gilds the western hills with light. 

With him old Janus doth appear. 

Peeping into the future year. 

With such a look as seems to say, 
15 The prospect is not good that way. 

Thus do we rise ill sights to see. 

And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy ; 

When the prophetic fear of things 

A more tormenting mischief brings, 
20 More full of soul-tormenting gall. 

Than direct mischiefs can befall. 

But stay ! but stay ! methinks my sight. 

Better inform'd by clearer light, 

Discerns sereneness in that brow, 
25 That all contracted seem'd but now. 

His revers'd face may show distaste. 

And frown upon the ills are past ; 

But that which this way looks is clear, 

And smiles upon the New-born Year. 
30 He looks too from a place so high, 

The Year lies open to his eye ; 

And all the moments open are 

To the exact discoverer. 

Yet more and more he smiles upon 



NEW YEAR'S EVE 5 I 

The happy revolution. 

Why should we then suspect or fear 

The influences of a year, 

So smiles upon us the first morn, 

And speaks us good so soon as born? 5 

Plague on't! the last was ill enough. 

This cannot but make better proof ; 

Or, at the worst, as we brush'd through 

The last, why so we may this too : 

And then the next in reason should 10 

Be superexcellently good : 

For the worst ills (we daily see) 

Have no more perpetuity, 

Than the best fortunes that do fall ; 

Which also bring us wherewithal 15 

Longer their being to support, 

Than those do of the other sort : 

And who has one good year in three, 

And yet repines at destiny. 

Appears ungrateful in the case, 20 

And merits not the good he has. 

Then let us welcome the New Guest 

With lusty brimmers of the best ; 

Mirth always should Good Fortune meet, 

And render e'en Disaster sweet : 25 

And though the Princess turn her back, 

Let us but line ourselves with sack. 

We better shall by far hold out, 

Till the next Year she face about. 

How say you, reader — do not these verses smack of the 30 
rough magnanimity of the old English vein? Do they not 
fortify like a cordial ; enlarging the heart, and productive of 
sweet blood, and generous spirits, in the concoction? Where 
be those puling fears of death, just now expressed or affected ? 
— Passed like a cloud — absorbed in the purging sunlight 35 
of clear poetry — clean washed away by a wave of genuine 



52 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 

Helicon, your only Spa for these hypochondries — And now 
another cup of the generous ! and a merry New Year, and many 
of them, to you all, my masters ! 



VII. MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 

"A CLEAR fire, a clean hearth,^ and the rigour of the game." 

5 This was the celebrated wish of old Sarah Battle (now with 
God), who, next to her devotions, loved a good game at whist. 
She was none of your lukewarm gamesters, your half and half 
players, who have no objection to take a hand, if you want one 
to make up a rubber ; who affirm that they have no pleasure in 

lo winning; that they like to win one game and lose another;^ 
that they can while away an hour very agreeably at a card- 
table, but are indifferent whether they play or no ; and will 
desire an adversary, who has slipped a wrong card, to take it 
up and play another. These insufferable triflers are the curse 

15 of a table. One of these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such 
it may be said, that they do not play at cards, but only play at 
playing at them. 

Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She detested them, 
as I do, from her heart and soul ; and would not, save upon 

20 a striking emergency, willingly seat herself at the same table 
with them. She loved a thorough-paced partner, a determined 
enemy. She took, and gave no concessions. She hated favours. 
She never made a revoke, nor ever passed it over in her adver- 
sary without exacting the utmost forfeiture. She fought a 

25 good fight : cut and thrust. She held not her good sword (her 

1 This was before the introduction of rugs, reader. You must 
remember the intolerable crash of the unswept cinder, betwixt your 
foot and the marble. 

2 As if a sportsman should tell you he liked to kill a fox one day, and 
lose him the next. 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 53 

cards) "like a dancer." She sat bolt upright; and neither 
showed you her cards, nor desired to see yours. All people 
have their blind side — their superstitions ; and I have heard 
her declare, under the rose, that Hearts was her favourite suit. 

I never in my life — and I knew Sarah Battle many of the 5 
best years of it — saw her take out her snuff-box when it was 
her turn to play ; or snuff a candle in the middle of a game ; 
or ring for a servant, till it was fairly over. She never intro- 
duced, or connived at, miscellaneous conversation during its 
process. As she emphatically observed, cards were cards: 10 
and if I ever saw unmingled distaste in her fine last-century 
countenance, it was at the airs of a young gentleman of a 
literary turn, who had been with difficulty persuaded to take 
a hand ; and who, in his excess of candour, declared, that 
he thought there was no harm in unbending the mind now 15 
and then, after serious studies, in recreations of that kind ! 
She could not bear to have her noble occupation, to which 
she wound up her faculties, considered in that light. It was 
her business, her duty, the thing she came into the world to 
do, — and she did it. She unbent her mind afterwards — 20 
over a book. 

Pope was her favourite author ; his Rape of the Lock her 
favourite work. She once did me the favour to play over with 
me (with the cards) his celebrated game of Ombre in that 
poem ; and to explain to me how far it agreed with, and in 25 
what points it would be found to differ from, traydrille. Her 
illustrations were apposite and poignant ; and I had the 
pleasure of sending the substance of them to Mr. Bowles ; 
but I suppose they came too late to be inserted among his 
ingenious notes upon that author. 3c 

Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first love ; but 
whist had engaged her maturer esteem. The former, she 
said, was showy and specious, and likely to allure young per- 
sons. The uncertainty and quick shifting of partners — a 



54 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 

thing which the constancy of whist abhors ; — the dazzling 
supremacy and regal investiture of Spadille — absurd, as she 
justly observed, in the pure aristocracy of whist, where his 
crown and garter give him no proper power above his brother- 
5 nobility of the Aces ; — the giddy vanity, so taking to the 
inexperienced, of playing alone ; — above all, the overpowering 
attractions of a Sans Prendre Vole, — to the triumph of which 
there is certainly nothing parallel or approaching, in the con- 
tingencies of whist ; — all these, she would say, make quadrille 

lo a game of captivation to the young and enthusiastic. But 
whist was the solider game : that was her word. It was a 
long meal; not, like quadrille, a feast of snatches. One or 
two rubbers might co-extend in duration with an evening. 
They gave time to form rooted friendships, to cultivate steady 

15 enmities. She despised the chance-started, capricious, and 
ever fluctuating alliances of the other. The skirmishes of 
quadrille, she would say, reminded her of the petty ephem- 
eral embroilments of the little Italian states, depicted by 
Machiavel ; perpetually changing postures and connections ; 

20 bitter foes to-day, sugared darlings to-morrow ; kissing and 
scratching in a breath ; — but the wars of whist were com- 
parable to the long, steady, deep-rooted, rational antipathies 
of the great French and English nations. 

A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired in her 

25 favourite game. There was nothing silly in it, like the nob 
in cribbage — nothing superfluous. No flushes — that most 
irrational of all pleas that a reasonable being can set up : — 
that any one should claim four by virtue of holding cards of 
the same mark and colour, without reference to the playing 

30 of the game, or the individual worth or pretensions of the 
cards themselves ! She held this to be a solecism ; as pitiful 
an ambition at cards as alliteration is in authorship. She 
despised superficiality, and looked deeper than the colours of 
things. — Suits were soldiers, she would say, and must have a 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 55 

uniformity of array to distinguish them : but what should we 
say to a foolish squire, who should claim a merit from dressing 
up his tenantry in red jackets that never were to be marshalled 
— never to take the field ? — she even wished that whist were 
more simple than it is ; and in my mind, would have stripped 5 
it of some appendages, which in the state of human frailty, 
may be venially, and even commendably, allowed of. She saw 
no reason for the deciding of the trump by the turn of the 
card. Why not one suit always trumps? — Why two colours, 
when the mark of the suits would have sufficiently distinguished 10 
them without it ? — 

" But the eye, my dear madam, is agreeably refreshed with 
the variety. Man is not a creature of pure reason — he must 
have his senses delightfully appealed to. We see it in Roman 
Catholic countries, where the music and the paintings draw in 15 
many to worship, whom your quaker spirit of unsensualizing 
would have kept out. — You, yourself, have a pretty collection 
of paintings — but confess to me, whether, walking in your 
gallery at Sandham, among those clear Vandykes, or among 
the Paul Potters in the ante-room, you ever felt your bosom 20 
glow with an elegant delight, at all comparable to that you 
have it in your power to experience most evenings over a well- 
arranged assortment of the court cards? — the pretty antic 
habits, like heralds in a procession — the gay triumph-assur- 
ing scarlets — the contrasting deadly-killing sables — the ' hoary 25 
majesty of spades ' — Pam in all his glory ! — 

" All these might be dispensed with ; and, with their naked 
names upon the drab pasteboard, the game might go on very 
well, pictureless. But the beauty of cards would be extin- 
guished for ever. Stripped of all that is imaginative in them, 30 
they must degenerate into mere gambling. — Imagine a dull 
deal-board, or drum head, to spread them on, instead of that 
nice verdant carpet (next to nature's), fittest arena for those 
courtly combatants to play their gallant jousts and turneys in ! 



56 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 

— Exchange those dehcately- turned ivory markers — (work of 
Chinese artist, unconscious of their symbol, — or as profanely 
slighting their true application as the arrantest Ephesian jour- 
neyman that turned out those little shrines for the goddess) — ■ 
5 exchange them for little bits of leather (our ancestors' money) 
or chalk and a slate ! " — 

The old lady, with a smile, confessed the soundness of my 
logic ; and to her approbation of my arguments on her favour- 
ite topic that evening, I have always fancied myself indebted 

10 for the legacy of a curious cribbage-board, made of the finest 
Sienna marble, which her maternal uncle (old Walter Plumer, 
whom I have elsewhere celebrated) brought with him from 
Florence : — this, and a trifle of five hundred pounds, came 
to me at her death. 

15 The former bequest (which I do not least value) I have 
kept with religious care ; though she herself, to confess a 
truth, was never greatly taken with cribbage. It was an 
essentially vulgar game, I have heard her say, — disputing 
with her uncle, who was very partial to it. She could never 

20 heartily bring her mouth to pronounce "^^ " — or '^that^s 
a go.'" She called it an ungrammatical game. The pegging 
teased her. I once knew her to forfeit a rubber (a five dollar 
stake), because she would not take advantage of the turn-up 
knave, which would have given it her, but which she must 

25 have claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declaring ^^ two for 
his heels.'' There is something extremely genteel in this sort 
of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a gentlewoman born. 

Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two persons, 
though she would ridicule the pedantry of the terms — such 

30 as pique — repique — the capot — they savoured (she thought) 
of affectation. But games for two, or even three, she never 
greatly cared for. She loved the quadrate, or square. She 
would argue thus : — Cards are warfare : the ends are gain, 
with glory. But cards are war in disguise of a sport : when 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 57 

single adversaries encounter, the ends proposed are too pal- 
pable. By themselves, it is too close a fight ; with spectators, 
it is not much bettered. No looker-on can be interested, 
except for a bet, and then it is a mere affair of money ; he 
cares not for your luck sympathetically, or for your play. — 5 
Three are still worse ; a mere naked war of every man against 
every man, as in cribbage, without league or alliance ; or a 
rotation of petty and contradictory interests, a succession of 
heartless leagues, and not much more hearty infractions of 
them, as in traydrille. — But in square games {she meant whist) 10 
all that is possible to be attained in card-playing is accom- 
plished. There are the incentives of profit with honour, 
common to every species — though the latter can be but very 
imperfectly enjoyed in those other games, where the spec- 
tator is only feebly a participator. But the parties in whist 15 
are spectators and principals too. They are a theatre to them- 
selves, and a looker-on is not wanted. He is rather worse 
than nothing, and an impertinence. Whist abhors neutrality, 
or interests beyond its sphere. You glory in some surprising 
stroke of skill or fortune, not because a cold — or even an 20 
interested — bystander witnesses it, but because your partner 
sympathizes in the contingency. You win for two. You 
triumph for two. Two are exalted. Two again are morti- 
fied ; which divides their disgrace, as the conjunction doubles 
(by taking off the invidiousness) your glories. Two losing 25 
to two are better reconciled, than one to one in that close 
butchery. The hostile feeling is weakened by multiplying the 
channels. War becomes a civil game. — By such reasonings 
as these the old lady was accustomed to defend her favourite 
pastime. 30 

No inducement could ever prevail upon her to play at any 
game, where chance entered into the composition, ^r /z^^/^m^. 
Chance, she would argue — and here again, admire the subtlety 
of her conclusion ! — chance is nothing, but where something 



58 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 

else depends upon it. It is obvious that cannot be glory. 
What rational cause of exultation could it give to a man to 
turn up size ace a hundred times together by himself? or 
before spectators, where no stake was depending? — Make 
5 a lottery of a hundred thousand tickets with but one fortunate 
number — and what possible principle of our nature, except 
stupid wonderment, could it gratify to gain that number as 
many times successively, without a prize? — Therefore she 
disliked the mixture of chance in backgammon, where it was 

lo not played for money. She called it foolish, and those 
people idiots, who were taken with a lucky hit under such 
circumstances. Games of pure skill were as little to her 
fancy. Played for a stake, they were a mere system of over- 
reaching. Played for glory, they were a mere setting of one 

15 man's wit — his memory, or combination-faculty rather — 
against another's ; like a mock-engagement at a review, blood- 
less and profitless. — She could not conceive a game wanting 
the sprightly infusion of chance, — the handsome excuses of 
good fortune. Two people playing at chess in a corner of a 

20 room, whilst whist was stirring in the centre, would inspire 
her with insufferable horror and ennui. Those well-cut simili- 
tudes of Castles and Knights, the imagery of the board, she 
would argue (and I think in this case justly), were entirely 
misplaced and senseless. Those hard head-contests can in no 

25 instance ally with the fancy. They reject form and colour, 
A pencil and dry slate (she used to say) were the proper arena 
for such combatants. 

To those puny objectors against cards, as nurturing the bad 
passions, she would retort that man is a gaming animal. He 

30 must be always trying to get the better in something or other : 
— that this passion can scarcely be more safely expended than 
upon a game at cards : that cards are a temporary illusion ; in 
truth, a mere drama ; for we do but play at being mightily 
concerned,, where a few idle shillings are at stake, yet, during 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 59 

the illusion, we are as mightily concerned as those whose stake 
is crowns and kingdoms. They are a sort of dream-fighting ; 
much ado ; great battling and little bloodshed ; mighty means 
for disproportioned ends ; quite as diverting, and a great deal 
more innoxious, than many of those more serious games of life, 5 
which men play, without esteeming them to be such. 

With great deference to the old lady's judgment on these 
matters, I think I have experienced some moments in my life, 
when playing at cards for nothing has even been agreeable. 
When I am in sickness, or not in the best spirits, I sometimes lo 
call for the cards, and play a game at piquet y^r love with my 
cousin Bridget — Bridget Elia. 

I grant there is something sneaking in it : but with a 
toothache, or a sprained ankle, — when you are subdued and 
humble, — you are glad to put up with an inferior spring of 15 
action. 

There is such a thing in nature, I am convinced, as sick 
whist. — 

I grant it is not the highest style of man — I deprecate the 
manes of Sarah Battle — she lives not, alas ! to whom I should 20 
apologize. — 

At such times, those terms which my old friend objected to, 
come in as something admissible. — I love to get a tierce or 
a quatorze, though they mean nothing. I am subdued to an 
inferior interest. Those shadows of winning amuse me. 25 

That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I capotted her) 
— (dare I tell thee, how fooKsh I am ?) — I wished it might 
have lasted for ever, though we gained nothing, and lost noth- 
ing, though it was a mere shade of play : I would be content 
to go on in that idle folly for ever. The pipkin should be ever 30 
boiling, that was to prepare the gentle lenitive to my foot, 
which Bridget was doomed to apply after the game was over : 
and as I do not much rehsh appliances, there it should ever 
bubble. Bridget and I should be ever playing. 



60 VALENTINE'S DAY 



VIII. VALENTINE'S DAY 



Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine ! Great is 
thy name in the rubric, thou venerable Arch-flamen of Hymen ! 
Immortal Go-between ! who and what manner of person art 
thou ? Art thou but a 7ia7ne^ typifying the restless principle which 

5 impels poor humans to seek perfection in union ? or wert thou in- 
deed a mortal prelate, with thy tippet and thy rochet, thy apron 
on, and decent lawn sleeves? Mysterious personage ! like unto 
thee, assuredly, there is no other mitred father in the calen- 
dar ; not Jerome, nor Ambrose, nor Cyril ; nor the consigner of 

10 undipped infants to eternal torments, Austin, whom all mothers 
hate ; nor he who hated all mothers, Origen ; nor Bishop Bull, 
nor Archbishop Parker, nor Whitgift. Thou comest attended 
with thousands and ten thousands of little Loves, and the air is 

Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings. 

15 Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy precentors; and 

instead of the crozier, the mystical arrow is borne before thee. 

In other words, this is the day on which those charming Uttle 

missives, ycleped Valentines, cross and intercross each other 

at every street arid turning. The weary and all forespent two- 

20 penny postman sinks beneath a load of delicate embarrassments, 
not his own. It is scarcely credible to what an extent this 
ephemeral courtship is carried on in this loving town, to the 
great enrichment of porters, and detriment of knockers and 
bell-wires. In these Httle visual interpretations, no emblem is so 

25 common as the heart, — that httle three-cornered exponent of 
all our hopes and fears, — the bestuck and bleeding heart ; it 
is twisted and tortured into more allegories and affectations 
than an opera hat. What authority we have in history or 
mythology for placing the head-quarters and metropoHs of God 

30 Cupid in this anatomical seat rather than in any other, is not 



VALENTINE'S DAY 6l . 

very clear ; but we have got it, and it will serve as well as any 
other. Else we might easily imagine, upon some other system 
which might have prevailed for anything which our pathology 
knows to the contrary, a lover addressing his mistress, in 
perfect simplicity of feeling, " Madam, my liver and fortune 5 
are entirely at your disposal;" or putting a delicate question, 
"Amanda, have you a i7iidriff \.o bestow?" But custom has 
settled these things, and awarded the seat of sentiment to the 
aforesaid triangle, while its less fortunate neighbours wait at 
animal and anatomical distance. lo 

Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural 
sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door. It " gives a 
very echo to the throne where hope is seated." But its issues 
seldom answer to this oracle within. It is so seldom that just 
the person we want to see comes. But of all the clamorous 15 
visitations the welcomest in expectation is the sound that ushers 
in, or seems to usher in, a Valentine. As the raven himself 
was hoarse that announced the fatal entrance of Duncan, so 
the knock of the postman on this day is light, airy, confident, 
and befitting one that bringeth good tidings. It is less mechan- 20 
ical than on other days ; you will say, " that is not the post, I 
am sure." Visions of Love, of Cupids, of Hymens ! — delight- 
ful eternal commonplaces, which " having been will always be ;" 
which no school-boy nor school-man can write away; having 
your irreversible throne in the fancy and affections — what are 25 
your transports, when the happy maiden, opening with careful 
finger, careful not to break the emblematic seal, bursts upon the 
sight of some well-designed allegory, some type, some youth- 
ful fancy, not without verses — 

Lovers all, 30 

A madrigal, 

or some such device, not over-abundant in sense — young Love 
disclaims it, — - and not quite silly — something between wind 



62 VALENTINE'S DAY 

and water, a chorus where the sheep might almost join the 

shepherd, as they did, or as I apprehend they did, in Arcadia. 

All Valentines are not foolish ; and I shall not easily forget 

thine, my kind friend (if I may have leave to call you so) 

5 E. B. — E. B. lived opposite a young maiden, whom he had 

often seen, unseen, from his parlour window in C e Street. 

She was all joyousness and innocence, and just of an age to 
enjoy receiving a Valentine, and just of a temper to bear the 
disappointment of missing one with good humour. E. B. is 

lo an artist of no common powers ; in the fancy parts of design- 
ing, perhaps inferior to none ; his name is known at the bottom 
of many a well-executed vignette in the way of his profession, 
but no further ; for E. B. is modest, and the world meets 
nobody half-way. E. B. meditated how he could repay this 

15 young maiden for many a favour which she had done him 
unknown ; for when a kindly face greets us, though but pass- 
ing by, and never knows us again, nor we it, we should feel it 
as an obligation ; and E. B. did. This good artist set himself 
at work to please the damsel. It was just before Valentine's 

20 day three years since. He wrought, unseen, and unsuspected, 
a wondrous work. We need not say it was on the finest gilt 
paper, with borders — full, not of common hearts and heartless 
allegory, but all the prettiest stories of love from Ovid and 
older poets than Ovid (for E. B. is a scholar). There was 

25 Pyramus and Thisbe, and be sure Dido was not forgot, nor 
Hero and Leander, and swans more than sang in Cayster, 
with mottoes and fanciful devices, such as beseemed — a work, 
in short of magic. Iris dipt the woof. This on Valentine's > 
eve he commended to the all-swallowing indiscriminate orifice: 

30 — (O ignoble trust !) — of the common post ; but the humble: 
medium did its duty, and from his watchful stand, the next 
morning, he saw the cheerful messenger knock, and by-and-byi 
the precious charge delivered. He saw, unseen, the happyi 
girl unfold the Valentine, dance about, clap her hands, as 



A QUAKERS' MEETING 63 

one after one the pretty emblems mifolded themselves. She 
danced about, not with Hght love or foolish expectations, for 
she had no lover ; or, if she had, none she knew that could 
have created those bright images which delighted her. It was 
more like some fairy present; a God-send, as our famiharly 5 
pious ancestors termed a benefit received, where the bene- 
factor was unknown. It would do her no harm. It would 
do her good for ever after. It is good to love the unknown. 
I only give this as a specimen of E. B. and his modest way 
of doing a concealed kindness. 10 

"Good-morrow to my Valentine," sings poor Ophelia; and 
no better wish, but with better auspices, we wish to all faith- 
ful lovers, who are not too wise to despise old legends, but are 
content to rank themselves humble diocesans of old Bishop 
Valentine, and his true church. 15 



IX. A QUAKERS' MEETING 

Still-born Silence ! thou that art 

Flood-gate of the deeper heart ! 

Offspring of a heavenly kind ! 

Frost o' the mouth, and thaw o' the mind ! 

Secrecy's confidant, and he 20 

Who makes religion mystery ! 

Admiration's speaking'st tongue ! 

Leave, thy desert shades among. 

Reverend hermits' hallow'd cells, 

Where retired devotion dwells! 25 

With thy enthusiasms come, 

Seize our tongues, and strike us dumb ! 

Fleckno.1 

Reader, wouldst thou know what true peace and quiet 
mean ; ►wouldst thou find a refuge from the noises and 
clamours of the multitude ; wouldst thou enjoy at once soli- 30 
tude and society ; wouldst thou possess the depth of thy own 

1 " Love's Dominion." 



64 A QUAKERS' MEETING 

spirit in stillness, without being shut out from the consol- 
atory faces of thy species; wouldst thou be alone, and yet 
accompanied ; soHtary, yet not desolate ; singular, yet not 
without some to keep thee in countenance ; a unit in aggre- 
5 gate ; a simple in composite : — come with me into a Quakers' 
Meeting. 

Dost thou love silence as deep as that " before the winds 
were made?" go not out into the wilderness, descend not 
into the profundities of the earth ; shut not up thy casements ; 

10 nor pour wax into the little cells of thy ears, with little-faithed 
self-mistrusting Ulysses. — Retire with me into a Quakers' 
Meeting. 

For a man to refrain even from good words, and to hold 
his peace, it is commendable ; but for a multitude, it is great 

15 mastery. 

What is the stillness of the desert, compared with this 
place? what the uncommunicating muteness of fishes? — 
here the goddess reigns and revels. — " Boreas, and Cesias, 
and Argestes loud," do not with their inter-confounding 

20 uproars more augment the brawl — nor the waves of the 
blown Baltic with their clubbed sounds — than their opposite 
(Silence her sacred self) is multiplied and rendered more 
intense by numbers and by sympathy. She too hath her 
deeps, that call unto deeps. Negation itself hath a positive 

25 more and less; and closed eyes would seem to obscure the 
great obscurity of midnight. , 

There are wounds, which an imperfect solitude cannot heal. 
By imperfect I mean that which a man enjoyeth by himself. 
The perfect is that which he can sometimes attain in crowds, 

30 but nowhere so absolutely as in a Quakers' Meeting. — 
Those first hermits did certainly understand this principle, 
when they retired into Egyptian solitudes, not singly, but in 
shoals, to enjoy one another's want of conversation. The 
Carthusian is bound to his brethren by this agreeing spirit of 



A QUAKERS' MEETING 65 

incommunicativeness. In secular occasions, what so pleasant 
as to be reading a book through a long winter evening, with a 
friend sitting by — say, a wife — he, or she, too (if that be 
probable), reading another, without interruption, or oral com- 
munication ? — can there be no sympathy without the gabble 5 
of words? — away with this inhuman, shy, single, shade-and- 
cavern-haunting solitariness. Give me. Master Zimmermann, 
a sympathetic solitude. 

To pace alone in the cloisters, or side aisles of some 
cathedral, time-stricken ; 10 

ft 
* 

Or under hanging mountains, 
Or by the fall of fountains ; 

is but a vulgar luxury, compared with that which those enjoy, 
who come together for the purposes of more complete, 
abstracted solitude. This is the loneliness "to be felt." — 15 
The Abbey Church of Westminster hath nothing so solemn, so 
spirit-soothing, as the naked walls and benches of a Quakers' 
Meeting. Here are no tombs, no inscriptions, 

sands, ignoble things, 

Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings — 20 

but here is something, which throws Antiquity herself into the 
foreground — Silence — eldest of things — language of old 
Night — primitive Discourser — to which the insolent decays 
of mouldering grandeur have but arrived by a violent, and, as 
we may say, unnatural progression. 25 

How reverend is the view of these hush'd heads 
Looking tranquillity! 

Nothing-plotting, nought-caballing, unmischievous synod ! 
convocation without intrigue ! parliament without debate ! what 
a lesson dost thou read to council, and to consistory ! — if my 30 
pen treat of you lightly — as haply it will wander — yet my 



66 A QUAKERS' MEETING 

spirit hath gravely felt the wisdom of your custom, when sitting 
among you in deepest peace, which some out-welling tears 
would rather confirm than disturb, I have reverted to the times 
of your beginnings, and the sowings of the seed by Fox and 

5 Dewesbury. — I have witnessed that, which brought before my 
eyes your heroic tranquillity, inflexible to the rude jests and 
serious violences of the insolent soldiery, republican or royalist, 
sent to molest you — for ye sate betwixt the fires of two per- 
secutions, the out-cast and off-scoiiring of church and presby- 

10 tery, — I have seen the reeling sea-ruffian, who had wandered 
into your receptacle, with the avowed intention of disturbing 
your quiet, from the very spirit of the place receive in a 
moment a new heart, and presently sit among ye as a lamb 
amidst lambs. And I remembered Penn before his accusers, 

15 and Fox in the bail-dock, where he was lifted up in spirit, as 
he tells us, and " the Judge and the Jury became as dead men 
under his feet." 

Reader, if you are not acquainted with it, I would recom- 
mend to you, above all church-narratives, to read Sewel's 

20 History of the Quakers. It is in folio, and is the abstract of 
the journals of Fox, and the Primitive Friends. It is far more 
edifying and affecting than anything you will read of Wesley 
and his colleagues. Here is nothing to stagger you, nothing to 
make you mistrust, no suspicion of alloy, no drop or dreg of 

25 the worldly or ambitious spirit. You will here read the true 
story of that much-injured, ridiculed man (who perhaps hath 
been a by- word in your mouth), — James Nay lor : what dread- 
ful sufferings, with what patience, he endured, even to the 
boring through of his tongue with red-hot irons without a mur- 

30 mur ; and with what strength of mind, when the delusion he 
had fallen into, which they stigmatized for blasphemy, had 
given way to clearer thoughts, he could renounce his error, in 
a strain of the beautifullest humility, yet keep his first grounds, 
and be a Quaker still ! — so different from the practice of your 



A QUAKERS' MEETING 6/ 

» 

common converts from enthusiasm, who, when they apostatize, 
apostatize all, and think they can never get far enough from 
the society of their former errors, even to the renunciation of 
some saving truths, with which they had been mingled, not 
impHcated. 5 

Get the writings of John Woohnan by heart ; and love the 
early Quakers. 

How far the followers of these good men in our days 
have kept to the primitive spirit, or in what proportion they 
have substituted formahty for it, the Judge of Spirits can alone lo 
determine. I have seen faces in their assembhes, upon which 
the dove sate visibly brooding. Others again I have watched, 
when my thoughts should have been better engaged, in which 
I could possibly detect nothing but a blank inanity. But 
quiet was in all, and the disposition to unanimity, and the 15 
absence of the fierce controversial workings. — If the spiritual 
pretensions of the Quakers have abated, at least they make 
few pretences. Hypocrites they certainly are not, in their 
preaching. It is seldom indeed that you shall see one get up 
amongst them to hold forth. Only now and then a trembling 20 
female, generally ancient, voice is heard — you cannot guess ^ 
from what part of the meeting it proceeds — with a low, buzz- 
ing, musical sound, laying out a few words which " she thought 
might suit the condition of some present," with a quaking dif- 
fidence which leaves no possibility of supposing that anything 25 
of female vanity was mixed up, where the tones were so full of 
tenderness, and a restraining modesty. — The men, from what 
I have observed, speak seldomer. 

Once only, and it was some years ago, I witnessed a sample 
of the old Foxian orgasm. • It was a man of giant stature, who, 30 
as Wordsworth phrases it, might have danced " from head to 
foot equipt in iron mail." His frame was of iron too. But he 
was malleable. I saw him shake all over with the spirit — I 
dare not say, of delusion. The strivings of the outer man were 



68 A QUAKERS' MEETING 

unutterable — he seemed not to speak, but to be spoken from. 
I saw the strong man bowed down, and his knees to fail — his 
joints all seemed loosening — it was a figure to set off against 
Paul preaching — the words he uttered were few, and sound 
5 — he was evidently resisting his will — keeping down his own 
word-wisdom with more mighty effort, than the world's orators 
strain for theirs. " He had been a Wit in his youth," he told 
us, with expressions of a sober remorse. And it was not till 
long after the impression had begun to wear away, that I was 

lo enabled, with something like a smile, to recall the striking 
incongruity of the confession — understanding the term in its 
worldly acceptation — with the frame and physiognomy of the 
person before me. His brow would have scared away the 
Levites — the Jocos Risus-que — faster than the Loves fled 

15 the face of Dis at Enna. — By wit, even in his youth, I will be 
sworn he understood something far within the limits of an 
allowable liberty. 

More frequently the Meeting is broken up without a word 
having been spoken. But the mind has been fed. You go 

20 away with a sermon, not made with hands. You have been in 
the milder caverns of Trophonius ; or as in some den, where 
that fiercest and savagest of all wild creatures, the Tongue, 
that unruly member, has strangely lain tied up and captive. 
You have bathed with stillness. — O when the spirit is sore 

25 fretted, even tired to sickness of the janglings, and nonsense- 
noises of the world, what a balm and a solace it is, to go and 
seat yourself, for a quiet half-hour, upon some undisputed cor- 
ner of a bench, among the gentle Quakers ! 

Their garb and stillness conjoined, present an uniformity, 

30 tranquil and herdlike — as in the pasture — " forty feeding 
like one." — 

The very garments of a Quaker seem incapable of receiv- 
ing a soil ; and cleanliness in them to be something more than 
the absence of its contrary. Every Quakeress is a lily; and 



MY RELATIONS 69 

when they come up in bands to their Whitsun-conferences, 
whitening the easterly streets of the metropoHs, from all parts 
of the United Kingdom, they show like troops of the Shining 
Ones. 

X. MY RELATIONS 

I AM arrived at that point of Hfe, at which a man may 5 
account it a blessing, as it is a singularity, if he have either 
of his parents surviving. I have not that felicity — and some- 
times think feelingly of a passage in "Browne's Christian 
Morals," where he speaks of a man that hath lived sixty or 
seventy years in the world. " In such a compass of time," he 10 
says, " a man may have a close apprehension what it is to be 
forgotten, when he hath lived to find none who could remem- 
ber his father, or scarcely the friends of his youth, and may sen- 
sibly see with what a face in no long time Oblivion will look 
upon himself." ^5 

I had an aunt, a dear and good one. She was one whom 
single blessedness had soured to the world. She often used 
to say, that I was the only thing in it which she loved ; and, 
when she thought I was quitting it, she grieved over me with 
mother's tears. A partiaUty quite so exclusive my reason can- 20 
not altogether approve. She was from morning till night por- 
ing over good books, and devotional exercises. Her favourite 
volumes were Thomas k Kempis, in Stanhope's Translation ; 
and a Roman Catholic Prayer-Book, with the malins and com- 
pli7ies regularly set down, — terms which I was at that time too 25 
young to understand. She persisted in reading them, although 
admonished daily concerning their Papistical tendency; and 
went to church every Sabbath, as a good Protestant should 
do. These were the only books she studied ; though, I think, 
at one period of her life, she told me she had read with 30 
great satisfaction the "Adventures of an Unfortunate Young 



70 MY RELATIONS 

Nobleman." Finding the door of the chapel in Essex Street 
open one day — it was in the infancy of that heresy — she went 
in, liked the sermon, and the manner of worship, and frequented 
it at intervals for some time after. She came not for doctri- 
5 nal points, and never missed them. With some little asperities 
in her constitution, which I have above hinted at, she was a 
steadfast friendly being, and a fine old Christian. She was a 
woman of strong sense, and a shrewd mind — extraordinary at 
a repartee ; one of the few occasions of her breaking silence 

10 — else she did not much value wit. The only secular employ- 
ment I remember to have seen her engaged in, was, the spHt- 
ting of French beans, and dropping them into a China basin of 
fair water. The odour of those tender vegetables to this day 
comes back upon my sense, redolent of soothing recollections, 

15 Certainly it is the most delicate of culinary operations. 

Male aunts, as somebody calls them, I had none — to 
remember. By the uncle's side I njay be said to have been 
born an orphan. Brother, or sister, I never had any — to 
know them. A sister, I think, that should have been Elizabeth, 

20 died in both our infancies. What a comfort, or what a care, 
may I not have missed in her ! — But I have cousins, sprinkled 
about in Hertfordshire — besides two, with whom I have been 
all my life in habits of the closest intimacy, and whom I may 
term cousins/^r excellence. These are James and Bridget Elia. 

25 They are older than myself by twelve, and ten, years ; and 
neither of them seems disposed, in matters of advice and guid- 
ance, to waive any of the prerogatives which primogeniture 
confers. May they continue still in the same mind ; and when 
they shall be seventy-five, and seventy-three, years old (I can- 

30 not spare them sooner), persist in treating me in my grand 
cHmacteric precisely as a striphng, or younger brother ! 

James is an inexplicable cousin. Nature hath her unities, 
which not every critic can penetrate ; or, if we feel, we cannot 
explain them. The pen of Yorick, and none since his, could 



MY RELATIONS /I 

have drawn J. E. entire — those fine Shandean Hghts and ^ 
shades, which make up his story. I must Hmp after in my 
poor antithetical manner, as the fates have given me grace and 
talent. J. E. then — to the eye of a common observer at least 

— seemeth made up of contradictory principles. — The genu- 5 
ine child of impulse, the frigid philosopher of prudence — the 
phlegm of my cousin's doctrine is invariably at war with his 
temperament, which is high sanguine. With always some fire- 
new project in his brain, J. E. is the systematic opponent of 
innovation, and crier-down of everything that has not stood the 10 
test of age and experiment. With a hundred fine notions chas- 
ing one another hourly in his fancy, he is startled at the least 
approach to the romantic in others ; and, determined by his own 
sense in everything, commends you to the guidance of com- 
mon-sense on all occasions. — With a touch of the eccentric in 15 
all which he does, or says, he is only anxious that you should 
not commit yourself by doing anything absurd or singular. 
On my once letting slip at table, that I was not fond of a 
certain popular dish, he begged me at any rate not to say so 

— for the world would think me mad. He disguises a passion- 20 
ate fondness for works of high art (whereof he hath amassed 

a choice collection), under the pretext of buying only to sell 
again — that his enthusiasm may give no encouragement to 
yours. Yet, if it were so, why does that piece of tender pas- 
toral Domenichino hang still by his wall? — is the ball of his 25 
sight much more dear to him? — or what picture-dealer can 
talk like him? 

Whereas mankind in general are observed to wrap their 
speculative conclusions to the bent of their individual hu- 
mours, his theories are sure to be in diametrical opposition 30 
to his constitution. He is courageous as Charles of Sweden, 
upon instinct; chary of his person, upon principle, as a 
travelHng Quaker. — He has been preaching up to me, all 
my life, the doctrine of bowing to the great — the necessity 



72 MY RELATIONS 

of forms, and manner, to a man's getting on in the world. 
He himself never aims at either, that I can discover, — and 
has a spirit, that would stand upright in the presence of the 
Cham of Tartary. It is pleasant to hear him discourse of 
5 patience — extolling it as the truest wisdom — and to see 
him during the last seven minutes that his dinner is getting 
ready. Nature never ran up in her haste a more restless 
piece of workmanship than when she moulded this impetuous 
cousin — and Art never turned out a more elaborate orator 

lo than he can display himself to be, upon his favourite topic 
of the advantages of quiet, and contentedness in the state, 
whatever it be, that we are placed in. He is triumphant on 
this theme, when he has you safe in one of those short stages 
that ply for the western road, in a very obstructing manner, 

15 at the foot of John Murray's street — where you get in when 
it is empty, and are expected to wait till the vehicle hath 
completed her just freight — a trying three-quarters of an 
hour to some people. He wonders at your fidgetiness — 
"■ where could we be better than we are, thus sitting, thus 

20 consulting r' — "prefers, for his part, a state of rest to loco- 
motion," — with an eye all the while upon the coachman 
— till at length, waxing out of all patience, at your want of it, 
he breaks out into a pathetic remonstrance at the fellow for 
detaining us so long over the time which he had professed, 

25 and declares peremptorily, that " the gentleman in the coach 

is determined to get out if he does not drive on that instant." 

Very quick at inventing an argument, or detecting a 

sophistry, he is incapable of attending you in any chain of 

arguing. Indeed he makes wild work with logic ; and seems 

30 to jump at most admirable conclusions by some process, not 
at all akin to it. Consonantly enough to this, he hath been 
heard to deny, upon certain occasions, that there exists such 
a faculty at all in man as reaso?t ; and wondereth how man 
came first to have a conceit of it — enforcing his negation 



MY RELATIONS 73 

with all the might of reasonifig he is master of. He has some 
speculative notions against laughter, and will maintain that 
laughing is not natural to him — when peradventure the next 
moment his lungs shall crow Hke Chanticleer. He says some 
of the best things in the world — and declareth that wit is his 5 
aversion. It was he who said, upon seeing the Eton boys at 
play in their grounds — What a pity to thiftk, that these fine 
inge?iuous lads in a few years will all be changed ifito frivolous 
Me77ibers of Farliamejit ! 

His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous — and in age 10 
he discovered no symptom of cooling. This is that which I 
admire in him. I hate people who meet Time half-way. I am 
for no compromise with that inevitable spoiler. While he 
lives, J. E. will take his swing. — It does me good, as I walk 
towards the street of my daily avocation, on some fine May 15 
morning, to meet him marching in a quite opposite direction, 
with a jolly handsome presence, and shining sanguine face, 
that indicates some purchase in his eye — a Claude — or a 
Hobbima — for much of his enviable leisure is consumed at 
Christie's, and Phillips's — or where not, to pick up pictures, 20 
and such gauds. On these occasions he mostly stoppeth me, 
to read a short lecture on the advantage a person like me 
possesses above himself, in having his time occupied with 
business which he must do — assureth me that he often feels 
it hang heavy on his hands — wishes he had fewer holidays — 25 
and goes off — Westward Ho ! — chanting a tune to Pall Mall 
— perfectly convinced that he has convinced me — while I 
proceed in my opposite direction tuneless. 

It is pleasant again to see this Professor of Indifference 
doing the honours of his new purchase, when he has fairly 30 
housed it. You must view it in every light, till he has found 
the best — placing it at this distance, and at that, but always 
suiting the focus of your sight to his own. You must spy 
at it through your fingers, to catch the aerial perspective — 



74 MY RELATIONS 

though you assure him that to you the landscape shows much 
more agreeable without that artifice. Woe be to the luckless 
wight, who does not only not respond to his rapture, but who 
should drop an unseasonable intimation of preferring one of 

5 his anterior bargains to the present ! — The last is always his 
best hit — his "Cynthia of the minute." — Alas! how many 
a mild Madonna have I known to come i?i — a Raphael ! — 
keep its ascendency for a few brief moons — then, after certain 
intermedial degradations, from the front drawing-room to the 

10 back gallery, thence to the dark parlour, — adopted in turn 
by each of the Carracci, under successive lowering ascriptions 
of filiation, mildly breaking its fall — consigned to the oblivi- 
ous lumber-room, go out at last a Lucca Giordano, or plain 
Carlo Maratti ! — which things when I beheld — musing upon 

15 the chances and mutabiUties of fate below — hath made me 
to reflect upon the altered condition of great personages, or 
that woful queen of Richard the Second — 

set forth in pomp. 

She came adorned hither like sweet May, 
20 Sent back like Hallowmas or shortest day. 

With great love for you, J. E. hath but a limited sympathy 
with what you feel or do. He lives in a world of his own, 
and makes slender guesses at what passes in your mind. He 
never pierces the marrow of your habits. He will tell an old- 

25 established playgoer, that Mr. Such-a-one, of So-and-so (nam- 
ing one of the theatres), is a very lively comedian — as a piece 
of news ! He advertised me but the other day of some pleas- 
ant green lanes which he had found out for me, knowifig me 
to be a great ivalker, in my own immediate vicinity — who have 

30 haunted the identical spot any time these twenty years ! — 
He has not much respect for that class of feehngs which goes 
by the name of sentimental. He applies the definition of real 
evil to bodily suffering exclusively — and rejecteth all others 



MY RELATIONS 75 

as imaginary. He is affected by the sight or the bare suppo- 
sition of a creature in pain, to a degree which I have never 
witnessed out of womankind. A constitutional acuteness to 
this class of sufferings, may in part account for this. The 
animal tribe in particular he taketh under his especial pro- 5 
tection. A broken-winded or spur-galled horse is sure to 
find an advocate in him. An over-loaded ass is his client for 
ever. He is the apostle to the brute kind — the never- fail- 
ing friend of those who have none to care for them. The 
contemplation of a lobster boiled, or eels skinned alive^ will 10 
wring him so, that " all for pity he could die." It will take 
the savour from his palate, and the rest from his pillow, for 
days and nights. With the intense feeling of Thomas Clark- 
son, he wanted only the steadiness of pursuit, and unity of pur- 
pose, of that " true yoke-fellow with Time," to have effected 15 
as much for the Ani7nai, as he hath done for the Negro Crea- 
tion. But my uncontrollable cousin is but imperfectly formed 
for purposes which demand co-operation. He cannot wait. 
His amelioration-plans must be ripened in a day. For this 
reason he has cut but an equivocal figure in benevolent socie- 20 
ties, and combinations for the alleviation of human sufferings. 
His zeal constantly makes him to outrun, and put out, his 
coadjutors. He thinks of relieving, — while they think of 
debating. He was black-balled out of a society for the Relief 
of * * * because the fervour of his humanity toiled beyond 25 
the formal apprehension, and creeping processes, of his asso- 
ciates. I shall always consider this distinction as a patent of 
nobility in the Elia family ! 

Do I mention these seeming inconsistencies to smile at, 
or upbraid, my unique cousin? Marry, heaven, and all good 30 
manners, and the understanding that should be between kins- 
folk, forbid ! — With all the strangeness of this strangest of the 
Elias — I would not have him in one jot or tittle other than 
he is; neither would I barter or exchange my wild kinsman 



']6 MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 

for the most exact, regular, and every-way consistent kinsman 
breathing. 

In my next, reader, I may perhaps give you some account 

of my cousin Bridget — if you are not already surfeited with 

5 cousins — and take you by the hand, if you are willing to go 

with us, on an excursion which we made a summer or two 

since, in search of more cousins — 

Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire. 



XL MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 

Bridget Elia has been my housekeeper for many a long 

io year. I have obligations to Bridget, extending beyond the 
period of memory. We house together, old bachelor and 
maid, in a sort of double singleness ; with such tolerable 
comfort, upon the whole, that I, for one, find myself in no 
sort of disposition to go out upon the mountains, with the 

15 rash king's offspring, to bewail my celibacy. We agree pretty 
well in our tastes and habits — yet so, as "with a difference." 
We are generally in harmony, with occasional bickerings — 
as it should be among near relations. Our sympathies are 
rather understood, than expressed ; and once, upon my dis- 

20 sembling a tone in my voice more kind than ordinary, my 
cousin burst into tears, and complained that I was altered. 
We are both great readers in different directions. While I 
am hanging over (for the thousandth time) some passage 
in old Burton, or one of his strange contemporaries, she is 

25 abstracted in some modern tale, or adventure, whereof our 
common reading-table is daily fed with assiduously fresh 
supplies. Narrative teases me. I have little concern in the 
progress of events. She must have a story, — well, ill, or 
indifferently told — so there be life stirring in it, and plenty 

30 of good or evil accidents. The fluctuations of fortune in 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 77 

fiction — and almost in real life — have ceased to interest, or 
operate but dully upon me. Out-of-the-way humours and 
opinions — heads with some diverting twist in them — the 
oddities of authorship please me most. My cousin has a 
native disrelish of anything that sounds odd or bizarre. 5 
Nothing goes down with her that is quaint, irregular, or out 
of the road of common sympathy. She " holds Nature more 
clever." I can pardon her blindness to the beautiful obliqui- 
ties of the Religio Medici ; but she must apologize to me for 
certain disrespectful insinuations, which she has been pleased 10 
to throw out latterly, touching the intellectuals of a dear 
favourite of mine, of the last century but one — the thrice 
noble, chaste, and virtuous, — but again somewhat fantastical, 
and original-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle. 

It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than I 15 
could have wished, to have had for her associates and mine, 
free-thinkers — leaders, and disciples, of novel philosophies 
and systems ; but she neither wrangles with, nor accepts, their 
opinions. That which was good and venerable to her, when 
she was a child, retains its authority over her mind still. 20 
She never juggles or plays tricks with her understanding. 

We are both of us inclined to be a little too positive ; and 
I have observed the result of our disputes to be almost uni- 
formly this — that in matters of fact, dates, and circumstances, 
it turns out, that I was in the right, and my cousin in the 25 
wrong. But where we have differed upon moral points ; 
upon something proper to be done, or let alone ; whatever 
heat of opposition, or steadiness of conviction, I set out with, 
I am sure always in the long run, to be brought over to her 
way of thinking. 30 

I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman with a 
gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to be told of her faults. 
She hath an awkward trick (to say no worse of it) of reading 
in company : at which times she will answer yes or no to a 



yS MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 

question, without fully understanding its purport — which is 
provoking, and derogatory in the highest degree to the dig- 
nity of the putter of the said question. Her presence of mind 
is equal to the most pressing trials of hfe, but will sometimes 
5 desert her upon trifling occasions. When the purpose requires 
it, and is a thing of moment, she can speak to it greatly ; but 
in matters which are not stuff of the conscience, she hath been 
known sometimes to let sHp a word less seasonably. 

Her education in youth was not much attended to ; and 
lo she happily missed all that train of female garniture, which 
passeth by the name of accomphshments. She was tumbled 
early, by accident or design, into a spacious closet of good 
old English reading, without much selection or prohibition, I 
and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage. ^ 
1 5 Had I twenty girls, they should be brought up exactly in this 
fashion. I know not whether their chance in wedlock might not 
be diminished by it ; but I can answer for it, that it makes (if 
the worst come to the worst) most incomparable old maids. 
In a season of distress, she is the truest comforter; but 
20 in the teasing accidents, and minor perplexities, which do 
not call out the wl// to meet them, she sometimes maketh 
matters worse by an excess of participation. If she does not 
always divide your trouble, upon the pleasanter occasions 
of life she is sure always to treble your satisfaction. She is 
25 excellent to be at play with, or upon a visit ; but best, when 
she goes a journey with you. 

We made an excursion together a few summers since, into 
Hertfordshire, to beat up the quarters of some of our less- 
known relations in that fine corn country. 
30 The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End ; or Mackarel 1 
End, as it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in some old maps; 
of Hertfordshire ; a farm-house, — delightfully situated within 1 
a gentle walk from Wheathampstead. I can just remember 1 
having been there, on a visit to a great-aunt, when I was a 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 79 

child under the care of Bridget; who, as I have said, is older 
than myself by some ten years. I wish that I could throw into 
a heap the remainder of our joint existences, ^ that we might 
share them in equal division. But that is impossible. The 
house was at that time in the occupation of a substantial yeo- 5 
man, who had married my grandmother's sister. His name 
was Gladman. My grandmother was a Bruton, married to 'a 
Field. The Gladmans and the Brutons are still flourishing in 
that part of the county, but the Fields are almost extinct. 
More than forty years had elapsed since the visit I speak of; and, 10 
for the greater portion of that period, we had lost sight of the 
other two branches also. Who or what sort of persons inherited 
Mackery End — kindred or strange folk — we were afraid 
almost to conjecture, but determined some day to explore. 

By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble park at 15 
Luton in our way from Saint Alban's, we arrived at the spot 
of our anxious curiosity about noon. The sight of the old 
farm-house, though every trace of it was effaced from my 
recollection, affected me with a pleasure which I had not 
experienced for many a year. For though / had forgotten 20 
it, we had never forgotten being there together, and we had 
been talking about Mackery End all our lives, till memory 
on my part became mocked with a phantom of itself, and I 
thought I knew the aspect of a place, which, when present, 
O how unlike it was to that, which I had conjured up so 25 
many times instead of it ! 

Still the air breathed balmily about it ; the season was in 
the " heart of June," and I could say with the poet. 

But thou, that didst appear so fair 

To fond imagination, 30 

Dost rival in the light of day 

Her delicate creation!^ 

1 Wordsworth. 



8o MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 

Bridget's was more a waking bliss than mine, for she 
easily remembered her old acquaintance again — some altered 
features, of course, a little grudged at. At first, indeed, she 
was ready to disbelieve for joy ; but the scene soon reconfirmed 
5 itself in her affections — and she traversed every outpost of the 
old mansion, to the wood-house, the orchard, the place v/here 
the pigeon-house had stood (house and birds were alike flown) 
— with a breathless impatience of recognition, which was more 
pardonable perhaps than decorous at the age of fifty odd. 

10 But Bridget in some things is behind her years. 

The only thing left was to get into the house — and that 
was a difficulty which to me singly would have been insur- 
mountable : for I am terribly shy in making myself known 
to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk. Love, stronger than 

15 scruple, winged my cousin in without me; but she soon 
returned with a creature that might have sat to a sculptor 
for the image of Welcome. It was the youngest of the 
Gladmans ; who, by marriage with a Bruton, had become 
mistress of the old mansion. A comely brood are the Bru- 

20 tons. Six of them, females, were noted as the handsomest 
young women in the county. But this adopted Bruton, in 
my mind, was better than they all — more comely. She was 
born too late to have remembered me. She just recollected 
in early life to have had her cousin Bridget once pointed out 

25 to her, climbing a stile. But the name of kindred, and of 
cousinship, was enough. Those slender ties, that prove shght 
as gossamer in the rending atmosphere of a metropolis, bind 
faster, as we found it, in hearty, homely, loving Hertfordshire. 
In five minutes we were as thoroughly acquainted as if we 

30 had been born and bred up together ; were familiar, even to 
the caUing each other by our Christian names. So Christians 
should call one another. To have seen Bridget, and her — 
it was like the meeting of the two scriptural cousins ! There 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 8 1 

was a grace and dignity, an amplitude of form and stature, 
answering to her mind, in this farmer's wife, which would 
have shined in a palace — or so we thought it. We were 
made welcome by husband and wife equally — we, and our 
friend that was with us. — I had almost forgotten him — but 5 
B. F. will not so soon forget that meeting, if peradventure he 
shall read this on the far-distant shores where the Kangaroo 
haunts. The fatted calf was made ready, or rather was 
already so, as if in anticipation of our coming; and, after 
an appropriate glass of native wine, never let me forget with lo 
what honest pride this hospitable cousin made us proceed to 
Wheathampstead, to introduce us (as some new-found rarity) 
to her mother and sister Gladmans, who did indeed know 
something more of us, at a time when she almost knew noth- 
ing. — With what corresponding kindness we were received by 1 5 
them also — how Bridget's memory, exalted by the occasion, 
warmed into a thousand half-obliterated recollections of things 
and persons, to my utter astonishment, and her own — and to 
the astoundment of B. F. who sat by, almost the only thing 
that was not a cousin there, — old effaced images of more 20 
than half-forgotten names and circumstances still crowding 
back upon her, as words written in lemon come out upon 
exposure to a friendly warmth, — when I forget all this, 
then may my country cousins forget me ; and Bridget no 
more remember, that in the days of weakling infancy I was 25 
her tender charge — as I have been her care in foolish man- 
hood since — in those pretty pastoral walks, long ago, about 
Mackery End, in Hertfordshire. 



S2 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 



XII. IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 

I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sympathizeth 
with all things ; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy, in anything. 
Those national repugnances do not touch me, nor do I behold with 
prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch. — Religio Medici. 

5 That the author of the Religio Medici, mounted upon the 
airy stilts of abstraction, conversant about notional and con- 
jectural essences ; in whose categories of Being the possible 
took the upper hand of the actual ; should have overlooked 
the impertinent individualities of such poor concretions as 
10 mankind, is not much to be admired. It is rather to be 
wondered at, that in the genus of animal he should have 
condescended to distinguish that species at all. For myself 
— earth-bound and fettered to the scene of my activities, — 

Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky, 

15 I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind, national 
or individual, to an unhealthy excess. I can look with no 
indifferent eye upon things or persons. Whatever is, is to 
me a matter of taste or distaste ; or when once it becomes 
indifferent, it begins to be disrelishing. I am, in plainer 

20 words, a bundle of prejudices — made up of Hkings and dis- 
likings — the veriest thrall to sympathies, apathies, antipathies. 
In a certain sense, I hope it may be said of me that I am a 
lover of my species. I can feel for all indifferently, but I 
cannot feel towards all equally. The more purely- English 

25 word that expresses sympathy will better explain my meaning. 
I can be a friend to a worthy man, who upon another account 
cannot be my mate ox fellow. I cannot like all people alike. ^ 

1 I would be understood as confining myself to the subject of imper- 
fect sympathies. To nations or classes of men there can be no direct 
antipathy. There may be individuals born and constellated so opposite 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 83 

I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am 
obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. They can- 
not like me — and in truth, I never knew one of that nation 
who attempted to do it. There is something more plain and 
ingenuous in their mode of proceeding. We know one another 5 
at first sight. There is an order of imperfect intellects (under 
which mine must be content to rank) which in its constitu- 
tion is essentially anti-Caledonian. The owners of the sort of 
faculties I allude to, have minds rather suggestive than com- 
prehensive. They have no pretences to much clearness or 10 
precision in their ideas, or in their manner of expressing them. 
Their intellectual wardrobe (to confess fairly) has few whole 
pieces in it. They are content with fragments and scattered 
pieces of Truth. She presents no full front to them — a 
feature or side-face at the most. Hints and glimpses, germs 15 
and crude essays at a system, is the utmost they pretend to. 
They beat up a little game peradventure — and leave it to 

to another individual nature, that the same sphere cannot hold them. 
I have met with my moral antipodes, and can believe the story of two 
persons meeting (who never saw one another before in their lives) and 
instantly fighting. 

We by proof find there should be 

'Twixt man and man such an antipathy, 
That though he can show no just reason why 
For any former wrong or injury, 
Can neither find a blemish in his fame. 
Nor aught in face or feature justly blame, 
Can challenge or accuse him of no evil. 
Yet notwithstanding hates him as a devil. 

The lines are from old Heywood's " Hierarchie of Angels," and he 
subjoins a curious story in confirm-ation, of a Spaniard who attempted 
to assassinate a King Ferdinand of Spain, and being put to the rack 
could give no other reason for the deed but an inveterate antipathy 
which he had taken to the first sight of the King. 

The cause to which that act compell'd him 



Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him. 



84 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 

knottier heads, more robust constitutions, to run it down. 
The light that Hghts them is not steady and polar, but 
mutable and shifting : waxing, and again waning. Their 
conversation is accordingly. They will throw out a random 
5 word in or out of season, and be content to let it pass for 
what it is worth. They cannot speak always as if they were 
upon their oath — but must be understood, speaking or writ- 
ing, with some abatement. They seldom wait to mature a 
proposition, but e'en bring it to market in the green ear. 

lo They delight to impart their defective discoveries, as they 
arise, without waiting for their full development. They are 
no systematizers, and would but err more by attempting it. 
Their minds, as I said before, are suggestive merely. The 
brain of a true Caledonian (if I am not mistaken) is consti- 

15 tuted upon quite a different plan. His Minerva is born in 
panoply. You are never admitted to see his ideas in their 
growth — if, indeed, they do grow, and are not rather put 
together upon principles of clock-work. You never catch 
his mind in an undress. He never hints or suggests any- 

20 thing, but unlades his stock of ideas in perfect order and 
completeness. He brings his total wealth into com.pany, 
and gravely unpacks it. His riches are always about him. 
He never stoops to catch a glittering something in your pres- 
ence, to share it with you, before he quite knows whether it 

25 be true touch or not. You cannot cry halves to anything that 
he finds. He does not find, but bring. You never witness 
his first apprehension of a thing. His understanding is always 
at its meridian — you never see the first dawn, the early streaks. 
— He has no falterings of self-suspicion. Surmises, guesses, 

30 misgivings, half-intuitions, semi-consciousnesses, partial illumi- 
nations, dim instincts, embryo conceptions, have no place in 
his brain, or vocabulary. The twihght of dubiety never falls 
upon him. Is he orthodox — he has no doubts. Is he an 
infidel — he has none either. Between the affirmative and 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 85 

the negative there is no border-land with him. You cannot 
hover with him upon the confines of truth, or wander in the 
maze of a probable argument. He always keeps the path. 
You cannot make excursions with him — for he sets you right. 
His taste never fluctuates. His morality never abates. He 5 
cannot compromise, or understand middle actions. There can 
be but a right and a wrong. His conversation is as a book. 
His aflirmations have the sanctity of an oath. You must speak 
upon the square with him. He stops a metaphor like a sus- 
pected person in an enemy's country. "A healthy book!" 10 
— said one of his countrymen to me, who had ventured to 
give that appellation to John Buncle, — • " did I catch rightly 
what you said? I have heard of a man in health, and of a 
healthy state of body, but I do not see how that epithet can 
be properly applied to a book." Above all, you must beware 15 
of indirect expressions before a Caledonian. Clap an extin- 
guisher upon your irony, if you are unhappily blest with a vein 
of it. Remember you are upon your oath. I have a print of 
a graceful female after Leonardo da Vinci, which I was show- 
ing off to Mr. . After he had examined it minutely, I 20 

ventured to ask him how he liked my beauty (a fooHsh name 
it goes by among my friends) — when he very gravely assured 
me, that " he had considerable respect for my character and 
talents" (so he was pleased to say), "but had not given him- 
self much thought about the degree of my personal preten- 25 
sions." The misconception staggered me, but did not seem 
much to disconcert him. — Persons of this nation are particu- 
larly fond of affirming a truth — which nobody doubts. They 
do not so properly aflirm, as annunciate it. They do indeed 
appear to have such a love of truth (as if, like virtue, it were 30 
valuable for itself) that all truth becomes equally valuable, 
whether the proposition that contains it be new or old, dis- 
puted, or such as is impossible to become a subject of disputa- 
tion. I was present not long since at a party of North Britons, 



86 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 

where a son of Burns was expected ; and happened to drop 
a silly expression (in my South British way), that I wished i1 
were the father instead of the son — when four of them started 
up at once to inform me, that " that was impossible, because 
5 he was dead." An impracticable wish, it seems, was more 
than they could conceive. Swift has hit off this part of their 
character, namely, their love of truth, in his biting way, but 
with an illiberality that necessarily confines the passage to the 
margin.-^ The tediousness of these people is certainly pro- 

lo voking. I wonder if they ever tire one another ! — In my 
early hfe I had a passionate fondness for the poetry of Burns. 
I have sometimes foolishly hoped to ingratiate myself with his 
countrymen by expressing it. But I have always found that a 
true Scot resents your admiration of his compatriot, even more 

15 than he would your contempt of him. The latter he imputes 
to your "imperfect acquaintance with many of the words which 
he uses ; " and the same objection makes it a presumption in 
you to suppose that you can admire him, — Thomson they 
seem to have forgotten. Smollett they have neither forgotten 

20 nor forgiven for his delineation of Rory and his companion, 
upon their first introduction to our metropolis. — Speak of 
Smollett as a great genius, and they will retort upon you 
Hume's History compared with his Continuation of it. What 
if the historian had continued Humphrey Clinker? 

25 I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for Jews. They are 
a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with which Stonehenge 

1 There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit them- 
selves, and entertain their company, with relating facts of no conse- 
quence, not at all out of the road of such common incidents as happen 
every day ; and this I have observed more frequently among the Scots 
than any other nation, who are very careful not to omit the minutest 
circumstances of time or place ; which kind of discourse, if it were not 
a little relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent 
and gesture peculiar to that country, would be hardly tolerable. — 
Hints towards an Essay on Conversation. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 8^ 

is in its nonage. They date beyond the pyramids. But I 
should not care to be in habits of famiHar intercourse with 
any of that nation. I confess that I have not the nerves 
to enter their synagogues. Old prejudices cling about me. 
I cannot shake off the story of Hugh of Lincoln. Centuries 5 
of injury, contempt, and hate, on the one side, — of cloaked 
revenge, dissimulation, and hate, on the other, between our 
and their fathers, must, and ought, to affect the blood of the 
children. I cannot believe it can run clear and kindly yet; 
or that a few fine words, such as candour, liberality, the hght lo 
of a nineteenth century, can close up the breaches of so deadly 
a disunion. A Hebrew is nowhere congenial to me. He is 
least distasteful on 'Change — for the mercantile spirit levels 
all distinctions, as are all beauties in the dark. I boldly con- 
fess I do not relish the approximation of Jew and Christian, 15 
which has become so fashionable. The reciprocal endear- 
ments have, to me, something hypocritical and unnatural in 
them. I do not like to see the Church and Synagogue kiss- 
ing and congeeing in awkward postures of an affected civility. 
If f^ey are converted, why do they not come over to us alto- 20 
gether? Why keep up a form of separation, when the life of 
it has fled? If they can sit with us at table, why do they 
kick at our cookery? I do not understand these halfcon- 
vertites. Jews christianizing — Christians judaizing — puzzle 
me. I like fish or flesh. A moderate Jew is a more con- 25 
founding piece of anomaly than a wet Quaker. The spirit 

of the synagogue is essentially separative. B would have 

been more in keeping if he had abided by the faith of his 
forefathers. There is a fine scorn in his face, which nature 

meant to be of Christians. The Hebrew spirit is strong 30 

in him, in spite of his proselytism. He cannot conquer the 
Shibboleth. How it breaks out, when he sings, " The Children 
of Israel passed through the Red Sea ! " The auditors, for 
the moment, are as Egyptians to him„ ^nd he rides over our 



88 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 

necks in triumph. There is no mistaking him. B — — has a 
strong expression of sense in his countenance, and it is con- 
firmed by his singing. The foundation of his vocal excellence 
is sense. He sings with understanding, as Kemble delivered 
5 dialogue. He would sing the Commanfiments, and give an 
appropriate character to each prohibition. His nation, in 
general, have not over-sensible countenances. How should 
they? — but you seldom see a silly expression among them. 
Gain, and the pursuit of gain, sharpen a man's visage. I 

10 never heard of an idiot being born among them. — Some 
admire the Jewish female-physiognomy. I admire it — but 
with trembling. Jael had those full dark inscrutable eyes. 

In the Negro countenance you will often meet with strong 
traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of tenderness towards 

1 5 some of these faces — or rather masks — that have looked out 
kindly upon one in casual encounters in the streets and high- 
ways. I love what Fuller beautifully calls — these "images 
of God cut in ebony." But I should not like to associate 
with them, to share my meals and my good-nights with them 

2o — because they are black. 

I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. I venerate the 
Quaker principles. It does me good for the rest of the day 
when I meet any of their people in my path. When I am ruffled 
or disturbed by any occurrence, the sight, or quiet voice of a 

25 Quaker, acts upon me as a ventilator, lightening the air, and 
taking off a load from the bosom. But I cannot like the Quakers 
(as Desdemona would say) " to live with them." I am all over 
sophisticated — with humours, fancies, craving hourly sympathy. 
I must have books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, scandal, jokes, 

30 ambiguities, and a thousand whim-whams, which their simpler 
taste can do without. I should starve at their primitive ban- 
quet. My appetities are too high for the salads which (according 
to Evelyn) Eve dressed for the angel, my gusto too excited 

To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 89 

The indirect answers which Quakers are often found to 
return to a question put to them may be explained, I think, 
without the vulgar assumption, that they are more given to 
evasion and equivocating than other people. They naturally 
look to their words more carefully, and are more cautious of 5 
committing themselves. They have a pecuHar character to 
keep up on this head. They stand in a manner upon their 
veracity. A Quaker is by law exempted from taking an oath. 
The custom of resorting to an oath in extreme cases, sanctified 
as it is by all religious antiquity, is apt (it must be confessed) 10 
to introduce into the laxer sort of minds the notion of two 
kinds of truth — the one applicable to the solemn affairs of 
justice, and the other to the common proceedings of daily 
intercourse. As truth bound upon the conscience by an oath 
can be but truth, so in the common affirmations of the shop 15 
and the market-place a latitude is expected and conceded 
upon questions wanting this solemn covenant. Something 
less than truth satisfies. It is common to hear a person say, 
"You do not expect me to speak as if I were upon my oath." 
Hence a great deal of incorrectness and inadvertency, short 20 
of falsehood, creeps into ordinary conversation ; and a kind 
of secondary or laic-truth is tolerated, where clergy-truth — 
oath-truth, by the nature of the circumstances, is not required. 
A Quaker knows none of this distinction. His simple affirma- 
tion being received, upon the most sacred occasions, without 25 
any further test, stamps a value upon the words which he is 
to use upon the most indifferent topics of Hfe. He looks to 
them, naturally, with more severity. You can have of him no 
more than his word. He knows, if he is caught tripping in a 
casual expression, he forfeits, for himself, at least, his claim 30 
to the invidious exemption. He knows that his syllables are 
weighed — and how far a consciousness of this particular 
watchfulness, exerted against a person, has a tendency to 
produce indirect answers, and a diverting of the question by 



90 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 

honest means, might be ilhistrated, and the practice justified, 
by a more sacred example than is proper to be adduced upon 
this occasion. The admirable presence of mind, which is 
notorious in Quakers upon all contingencies, might be traced 

5 to this imposed self-watchfulness — if it did not seem rather 
an humble and secular scion of that old stock of religious con- 
stancy, which never bent or faltered, in the Primitive Friends, 
or gave way to the winds of persecution, to the violence of judge 
or accuser, under trials and racking examinations. " You will 

lo never be the wiser, if I sit here answering your questions till 
midnight," said one of those upright Justicers to Penn, who had 
been putting law-cases with a puzzling subtlety. " Thereafter 
as the answers may be," retorted the Quaker. The astonish- 
ing composure of this people is sometimes ludicrously displayed 

15 in lighter instances. — I was travelling in a stage-coach with 
three male Quakers, buttoned up in the straightest non-con- 
formity of their sect. We stopped to bait at Andover, where 
a meal, partly tea apparatus, partly supper, was set before us. 
My friends confined themselves to the tea-table. I in my way 

20 took supper. When the landlady brought in the bill, the eldest 
of my companions discovered that she had charged for both 
meals. This was resisted. Mine hostess was very clamorous 
and positive. Some mild arguments were used on the part 
of the Quakers, for which the heated mind of the good lady 

25 seemed by no means a fit recipient. The guard came in with 
his usual peremptory notice. The Quakers pulled out their 
money, and formally tendered it — so much for tea — I, in 
humble imitation, tendering mine — for the supper which I 
had taken. She would not relax in her demand. So they 

30 all three quietly put up their silver, as did myself, and 
marched out of the room, the eldest and gravest going first, 
with myself closing up the rear, who thought I could not do 
better than follow the example of such grave and warrantable 
personages. We got in. The steps went up. The coach 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 9 1 

drove off. The murmurs of mine hostess, not very indis- 
tinctly or ambiguously pronounced, became after a time 
inaudible — and now my conscience, which the whimsical 
scene had for a while suspended, beginning to give some 
twitches, I waited, in. the hope that some justification would 5 
be offered by these serious people for the seeming injustice 
of their conduct. To my great surprise, not a syllable was 
dropped on the subject. They sate as mute as at a meeting. 
At length the eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring of 
his next neighbour, " Hast thee heard how indigos go at the 10 
India House? "and the question operated as a soporific on 
my moral feeling as far as Exeter. 



Xni. THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER 

TEMPLE 

I WAS born, and passed the first seven years of my life in 
the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its fountain, 
its river, I had almost said — for in those young years, what 1 5 
was this king of rivers to me but a stream that watered our 
pleasant places? these are of my oldest recollections. I 
repeat, to this day, no verses to myself more frequently, or 
with kindher emotion, than those of Spenser, where he speaks 
of this spot. 20 

There when they came, whereas those bricky towers, 

The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride, 

Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers, 

There whylome wont the Templer knights to bide, 

Till they decayed through pride. 25 

Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis. What 
a transition for a countryman visiting London for the first time 
— the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet Street, by 



92 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 

unexpected avenues, into its magnificent ample squares, its 
classic green recesses ! What a cheerful, liberal look hath 
that portion of it, which, from three sides, overlooks the 
greater garden : that goodly pile 

5 Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight, 

confronting, with massy contrast, the lighter, older, more fan- 
tastically shrouded one, named of Harcourt, with the cheerful 
Crown-office Row (place of my kindly engendure), right oppo- 
site the stately stream, which washes the garden-foot with her 

lo yet scarcely trade-polluted waters, and seems but just weaned 
from her Twickenham Naiades ! a man would give something 
to have been born in such places. What a collegiate aspect 

- has that fine Elizabethan hall, where the fountain plays, which 
I have made to rise and fall, how many times ! to the astound- 

15 ment of the young urchins, my contemporaries, who, not being 
able to guess at its recondite machinery, were almost tempted 
to hail the wondrous work as magic ! What an antique air had 
the now almost effaced sun-dials, with their moral inscriptions, 
seeming coevals with that Time which they measured, and to 

20 take their revelations of its flight immediately from heaven, 
holding correspondence with the fountain of fight ! How 
would the dark fine steal imperceptibly on, watched by the 
eye of childhood, eager to detect its movement, never catched, 
nice as an evanescent cloud, or the first arrests of sleep ! 

25 Ah ! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand 

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived ! 

What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowel- 
ments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dulness of commu- 
nication, compared with the simple altar-Hke structure, and 
30 silent heart-language of the old dial ! It stood as the garden 
god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost everywhere van- 
ished? If its business-use be superseded by more elaborate 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 93 

inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for 
its continuance. It spoke of moderate labours, of pleasures 
not protracted after sunset, of temperance, and good hours. 
It was the primitive clock, the horologe of the first world. 
Adam could scarce have missed it in Paradise. It was the 5 
measure appropriate for sweet plants and flowers to spring by, 
for the birds to apportion their silver warblings by, for flocks 
to pasture and be led to fold by. The shepherd " carved it out 
quaintly in the sun ; " and, turning philosopher by the very 
occupation, provided it with mottoes more touching than tomb- 10 
stones. It was a pretty device of the gardener, recorded by 
Marvell, who, in the days of artificial gardening, made a dial out 
of herbs and flowers. I must quote his verses a little higher up, 
for they are full, as all his serious poetry was, of a witty delicacy. 
They will not come in awkwardly, I hope, in a talk of fountains 15 
and sun-dials. He is speaking of sweet garden scenes : 

What wonderous life is this I lead ! 

Ripe apples drop about my head. 

The luscious clusters of the vine 

Upon my mouth do crush their wine. 20 

The nectarine, and curious peach, 

Into my hands themselves do reach. 

Stumbling on melons, as I pass, 

Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass. 

Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less 25 

Withdraws into its happiness ; 

The mind, that ocean, where each kind 

Does straight its own resemblance find ; 

Yet it creates, transcending these, 

Far other worlds and other seas ; 30 

Annihilating all that's made 

To a green thought in a green shade. 

Here at the fountain's sliding foot, 

Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root. 

Casting the body's vest aside, 35 



94 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 

My soul into the boughs does gUde : 
There hke a bird it sits and sings, 
Then whets and claps its silver wings ; 
And, till prepared for longer flight, 
5 Waves in its plumes the various light. 

How well the skilful gardener drew. 
Of flowers and herbs, this dial new ! 
Where, from above the milder sun 
Does through a fragrant zodiac run ; 
10 And, as it works, the industrious bee 

Computes its time as well as we. 
How could such sweet and wholesome hours 
Be reckon'd, but with herbs and flowers ? ^ 

The artificial fountains of the metropoHs are, in like manner, 

15 fast vanishing. Most of them are dried up, or bricked over. 
Yet, where one is left, as in that little green nook behind the 
South-Sea House, what a freshness it gives to the dreary pile ! 
Four little winged marble boys used to play their virgin fancies, 
spouting out ever fresh streams from their innocent wanton lips, 

20 in the square of Lincoln's Inn, when I was no bigger than they 
were figured. They are gone, and the spring choked up. The 
fashion, they tell me, is gone by, and these things are esteemed 
childish. Why not then gratify children, by letting them stand ? 
Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. They are awakening 

25 images to them at least. Why must everything smack of man, 
and mannish? Is the world all grown up ? Is childhood dead ? 
Or is there not in the bosoms of the wisest and the best some 
of the child's heart left, to respond to its earliest enchantments? 
The figures were grotesque. Are the stiff-wigged living figures, 

30 that still flitter and chatter about that area, less Gothic in 
appearance ? or is the splutter of their hot rhetoric one half 
so refreshing and innocent as the little cool playful streams 
those exploded cherubs uttered? 

1 From a copy of verses entitled The Garden. 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 95 

They have lately gothicized the entrance to the Inner 
Temple-hall, and the library front, to assimilate them, I 
suppose, to the body of the hall, which they do not at all 
resemble. What is become of the winged horse that stood 
over the former? a stately arms ! and who has removed those 5 
frescoes of the Virtues, which Italianized the end of the Paper- 
buildings ? — my first hint of allegory ! They must account 
to me for these things, which I miss so greatly. 

The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used to call the 
parade ; but the traces are passed away of the footsteps 10 
which made its pavement awful ! It is become common 
and profane. The old benchers had it almost sacred to 
themselves, in the fore part of the day at least. They 
might not be sided or jostled. Their air and dress asserted 
the parade. You left wide spaces betwixt you, when you 15 
passed them. We walk on even terms with their successors. 

The roguish eye of J 11, ever ready to be delivered of a 

jest, almost invites a stranger to vie a repartee with it. But 
what insolent familiar durst have mated Thomas Coventry? — 
whose person was a quadrate, his step massy and elephantine, 20 
his face square as the lion's, his gait peremptory and path-keep- 
ing, indivertible from his way as a moving column, the scare- 
crow of his inferiors, the brow-beater of equals and superiors, 
who made a solitude of children wherever he came, for they 
fled his insufferable presence, as they would have shunned an 25 
EHsha bear. His growl was as thunder in their ears, whether he 
spake to them in mirth or in rebuke, his invitatory notes being, 
indeed, of all, the most repulsive and horrid. Clouds of snuff, 
aggravating the natural terrors of his speech, broke from each 
majestic nostril, darkening the air. He took it, not by pinches, 30 
but a palmful at once, diving for it under the mighty flaps of his 
old-fashioned waistcoat pocket ; his waistcoat red and angry, 
his coat dark rappee, tinctured by dye original, and by adjuncts, 
with buttons of obsolete gold. And so he paced the terrace. 



g6 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 

By his side a milder form was sometimes to be seen ; the 
pensive gentiUty of Samuel Salt. They were coevals, and had 
nothing but that and their benchership in common. In poli- 
tics Salt was a Whig, and Coventry a staunch Tory. Many a 
5 sarcastic growl did the latter cast out — for Coventry had a 
rough spinous humour — at the political confederates of his 
associate, which rebounded from the gentle bosom of the latter 
like cannon-balls from wool. You could not ruffle Samuel Salt. 
S. had the reputation of being a very clever man, and of 

lo excellent discernment in the chamber practice of the law. I 
suspect his knowledge did not amount to much. When a 
case of difficult disposition of money, testamentary or other- 
wise, came before him, he ordinarily handed it over with a few 
instructions to his man Lovel, who was a quick little fellow, 

15 and would despatch it out of hand by the light of natural 
understanding, of which he had an uncommon share. It was 
incredible what repute for talents S. enjoyed by the mere trick 
of gravity. He was a shy man ; a child might pose him in a 
minute — indolent and procrastinating to the last degree. Yet 

20 men would give him credit for vast application in spite of him- 
self. He was not to be trusted with himself with impunity. 
He never dressed for a dinner-party but he forgot his sword 
— they wore swords then — or some other necessary part of 
his equipage. Lovel had his eye upon him on all these occa- 

25 sions, and ordinarily gave him his cue. If there was anything 
which he could speak unseasonably, he was sure to do it. — 
He was to dine at a relative's of the unfortunate Miss Blandy 
on the day of her execution ; and L., who had a wary fore- 
sight of his probable hallucinations, before he set out, schooled 

30 him with great anxiety not in any possible manner to allude 
to her story that day. S. promised faithfully to observe the 
injunction. He had not been seated in the parlour, where 
the company was expecting the dinner summons, four min- 
utes, when, a pause in the conversation ensuing, he got up. 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 9/ 

looked out of window, and pulling down his ruffles — an ordi- 
nary motion with him — observed, "it was a gloomy day," 
and added, " Miss Blandy must -be hanged by this time, I sup- 
pose." Instances of this sort were perpetual. Yet S. was 
thought by some of the greatest men of his time a fit person 5 
to be consulted, not alone in matters pertaining to the law, 
but in the ordinary niceties and embarrassments of conduct 
— from force of manner entirely. He never laughed. He 
had the same good fortune among the female world, — was a 
known toast with the ladies, and one or two are said to have 10 
died for love of him — I suppose, because he never trifled or 
talked gallantry with them, or paid them, indeed, hardly com- 
mon attentions. He had a fine face and person, but wanted, 
methought, the spirit that should have shown them off with 
advantage to the women. His eye lacked lustre. — Not so, 15 

thought Susan P ; who, at the advanced age of sixty, was 

seen, in the cold evening time, unaccompanied, wetting the 

pavement of B d Row with tears that fell in drops which 

might be heard, because her friend had died that day — he, 
whom she had pursued with a hopeless passion for the last 20 
forty years — a passion which years could not extinguish or 
abate ; nor the long resolved, yet gently enforced, puttings 
off of unrelenting bachelorhood dissuade from its cherished 

purpose. Mild Susan P , thou hast now thy friend in 

heaven ! 25 

Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble family of that 
name. He passed his youth in contracted circumstances, 
which gave him early those parsimonious habits which in after- 
life never forsook him ; so that, with one windfall or another, 
about the time I knew him he was master of four or five hun- 30 
dred thousand pounds ; nor did he look, or walk, worth a moi- 
dore less. He lived in a gloomy house opposite the pump in 
Serjeants' Inn, Fleet Street. J., the counsel, is doing self- 
imposed penance in it, for what reason I divine not, at this 



98 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 

day. C. had an agreeable seat at North Cray, where he sel- 
dom spent above a day or two at a time in the summer ; but 
preferred, during the hot months, standing at his window in 
this damp, close, well-like mansion, to watch, as he said, " the 
5 maids drawing water all day long." I suspect he had his 
wi thin-door reasons for the preference. Hie curries et arma 
fuere. He might think his treasures more safe. His house 
had the aspect of a strong box. C. was a close hunks — a 
hoarder rather than a miser — or, if a miser, none of the mad 

lo Elwes breed, who have brought discredit upon a character, 
which cannot exist without certain admirable points of steadi- 
ness and unity of purpose. One may hate a true miser, but 
cannot, I suspect, so easily despise him. By taking care of 
the pence, he is often enabled to part with the pounds, upon 

15 a scale that leaves us careless generous fellows halting at an 
immeasurable distance behind. C. gave away thirty thousand 
pounds at once in his lifetime to a blind charity. His house- 
keeping was severely looked after, but he kept the table of a 
gentleman. He would know who came in and who went out 

20 of his house, but his kitchen chimney was never suffered to 
freeze. 

Salt was his opposite in this, as in all — never knew what 
he was worth in the world ; and having but a competency for 
his rank, which his indolent habits were little calculated to 

25 improve, might have suffered severely if he had not had hon- 
est people about him. Lovel took care of everything. He 
was at once his clerk, his good servant, his dresser, his friend, 
his "flapper," his guide, stop-watch, auditor, treasurer. He 
did nothing without consulting Lovel, or failed in anything 

30 without expecting and fearing his admonishing. He put him- 
self almost too much in his hands, had they not been the pur- 
est in the world. He resigned his title almost to respect as a 
master, if L. could ever have forgotten for a moment that he 
was a servant. 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 99 

I knew this Lovel. He was a man of an incorrigible and 
losing honesty. A good fellow withal, and "■ would strike." 
In the cause of the oppressed he never considered inequali- 
ties, or calculated the number of his opponents. He once 
wrested a sword out of the hand of a man of quality that had 5 
drawn upon him ; and pommelled him severely with the hilt 
of it. The swordsman had offered insult to a female — an 
occasion upon which no odds against him could have pre- 
vented the interference of Lovel. He would stand next day 
bare-headed to the same person, modestly to excuse his inter- 10 
ference — for L. never forgot rank, where something better 
was not concerned. L. was the liveliest little fellow breath- 
ing, had a face as gay as Garrick's, whom he was said greatly 
to resemble (I have a portrait of him which confirms it), pos- 
sessed a fine turn for humorous poetry — next to Swift and 15 
Prior — moulded heads in clay or plaster of Paris to admira- 
tion, by the dint of natural genius merely ; turned cribbage- 
boards, and such small cabinet toys, to perfection ; took a 
hand at quadrille or bowls with equal facility ; made punch bet- 
ter than any man of his degree in England ; had the merriest 20 
quips and conceits, and was altogether as brimful of rogueries 
and inventions as you could desire. He was a brother of 
the angle, moreover, and just such a free, hearty, honest com- 
panion as Mr. Izaak Walton would have chosen to go a-fish- 
ing with. I saw him in his old age and the decay of his 25 
faculties, palsy-smitten, in the last sad stage of human weak- 
ness — "a remnant most forlorn of what he was," — yet even 
then his eye would light up upon the mention of his favourite 
Garrick. He was greatest, he would say, in Bayes — "was 
upon the stage nearly throughout the whole performance, and 30 
as busy as a bee." At intervals, too, he would speak of his 
former life, and how he came up a little boy from Lincoln to 
go to service, and how his mother cried at parting with him, 
and how he returned, after some few years' absence, in his 

JLefC. 



100 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 

smart new livery to see her, and she blessed herself at the change, 
and could hardly be brought to believe that it was " her own 
bairn." And then, the excitement subsiding, he would weep, 
till I have wished that sad second-childhood might have a 
5 mother still to lay its head upon her lap. But the common 
mother of us all in no long time after received him gently 
into hers. 

With Coventry, and with Salt, in their walks upon the terrace, 
most commonly Peter Pierson would join, to make up a third. 

[o They did not walk linked arm in arm in those days — " as now 

• our stout triumvirs sweep the streets," — but generally with 

both hands folded behind them for state, or with one at least 

behind, the other carrying a cane. P. was a benevolent, but 

not a prepossessing man. He had that in his face which you 

1 5 could not term unhappiness ; it rather implied an incapacity 
of being happy. His cheeks were colourless, even to white- 
ness. His look was uninviting, resembling (but without his 
sourness) that of our great philanthropist. I know that he did 
good acts, but I could never make out what he was. Con- 

2o temporary with these, but subordinate, was Daines Barrington 
— another oddity — he walked burly and square — in imita- 
tion, I think, of Coventry — howbeit he attained not to the 
dignity of his prototype. Nevertheless, he did pretty well, 
upon the strength of being a tolerable antiquarian, and hav- 

25 ing a brother a bishop. When the account of his year's treas- 
urership came to be audited, the following singular charge 
was unanimously disallowed by the bench : " Item, disbursed 
Mr. Allen, the gardener, twenty shillings, for stuff to poison 
the sparrows by my orders." Next to him was old Barton — a 

30 jolly negation, who took upon him the ordering of the bills of 
fare for the parliament chamber, where the benchers dine — 
answering to the combination rooms at college — much to the 
easement of his less epicurean brethren. I know nothing more 
of him. — Then Read, and Twopeny — Read, good-humoured 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE lOI 

and personable — Twopeny, good-humoured, but thin, and 
felicitous in jests upon his own figure. If T. was thin, Wharry 
was attenuated and fleeting. Many must remember him (for 
he was rather of later date) and his singular gait, which was 
performed by three steps and a jump regularly . succeeding. 5 
The steps were little efforts, like that of a child beginning to 
walk ; the jump comparatively vigorous, as a foot to an inch. 
Where he learned this figure, or what occasioned it, I could 
never discover. It was neither graceful in itself, nor seemed 
to answer the purpose any better than common walking. The 10 
extreme tenuity of his frame, I suspect, set him upon it. It 
was a trial of poising. Twopeny would often rally him upon 
his leanness, and hail him as Brother Lusty; but W. had no 
relish of a joke. His features were spiteful. I have heard 
that he would pinch his cat's ears extremely, when anything 15 
had offended him. Jackson — omniscient Jackson he was 
called — was of this period. He had the reputation of pos- 
sessing more multifarious knowledge than any man of his time. 
He was the Friar Bacon of the less literate portion of the 
Temple. I remember a pleasant passage, of the cook apply- 20 
ing to him, with much formality of apology, for instructions 
how to write down edge bone of beef in his bill of commons. 
He was supposed to know, if any man in the world did. He 
decided the orthography to be — as I have given it — fortify- 
ing his authority with such anatomical reasons as dismissed 25 
the manciple (for the time) learned and happy. Some do 
spell it yet perversely, aitch bone, from a fanciful resemblance 
between its shape, and that of the aspirate so denominated. 
I had almost forgotten Mingay with the iron hand — but he 
was somewhat later. He had lost his right hand by some 30 
accident, and suppHed it with a grappling hook, which he 
wielded with a tolerable adroitness. I detected the substitute, 
before I was old enough to reason whether it were artificial 
or not. I remember the astonishment it raised in me. He 



I02 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE .INNER TEMPLE 

was a blustering, loud-talking person ; and I reconciled the 
phenomenon to my ideas as an emblem of power — somewhat 
like the horns in the forehead of Michael Angelo's Moses. 
Baron Maseres, who walks (or did till very lately) in the cos- 
5 tume of the reign of George the Second, closes my imperfect 
recollections of the old benchers of the Inner Temple. 

Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled? Or, if the like of 
you exist, why exist they no more for me? Ye inexplicable, 
half-understood appearances, why comes in reason to tear away 

lo the preternatural mist, bright or gloomy, that enshrouded you? 
Why make ye so sorry a figure in my relation, who made up 
to me — to my childish eyes — the mythology of the Temple ? 
Ill those days I saw Gods, as "old men covered with a mantle," 
walking upon the earth. Let the dreams of classic idolatry 

15 perish, — extinct be the fairies and fairy trumpery of legend- 
ary fabling, — in the heart of childhood, there will, for ever, 
spring up a well of innocent or wholesome superstition — the 
seeds of exaggeration will be busy there, and vital — from every- 
day forms educing the unknown and the uncommon. . In that 

20 little Goshen there will be light, when the grown world floun- 
ders about in the darkness of sense and materiality. While 
childhood, and while dreams, reducing childhood, shall be left, 
imagination shall not have spread her holy wings totally to fly 
the earth. 

25 P.S. — I have done injustice to the soft shade of Samuel Salt. 
See what it is to trust to imperfect memory, and the erring 
notices of childhood ! Yet I protest I always thought that he 
had been a bachelor ! This gentleman, R. N. informs me, 
married young, and losing his lady in child-bed, within the first 

30 year of their union, fell into a deep melancholy, from the effects 
of which, probably, he never thoroughly recovered. In what 
a new light does this place his rejection (O call it by a gentler 
name ! ) of mild Susan P , unravelHng into beauty certain 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE IO3 

peculiarities of this very shy and retiring character ! — Hence- 
forth let no one receive the narratives of Elia for true records ! 
They are, in truth, but shadows of fact — verisimilitudes, not 
verities — or sitting but upon the remote edges and outskirts 
of history. He is no such honest chronicler as R. N., and would 5 
have done better perhaps to have consulted that gentleman, 
before he sent these incondite reminiscences to press. But 
the worthy sub-treasurer — who respects his old and his new 
masters — would but have been puzzled at the indecorous hber- 
ties of Elia. The good man wots not, peradventure, of the 10 
licence which Magazines have arrived at in this plain-speaking 
age, or hardly dreams of their existence beyond the Ge?ttle- 
man's — his furthest monthly excursions in this nature having 
been long confined to the holy ground of honest Urba?i's obit- 
uary. May it be long before his own name shall help to swell 15 
those columns of unenvied flattery ! — Meantime, O ye New 
Benchers of the Inner Temple, cherish him kindly, for he is 
himself the kindhest of human creatures. Should infirmities 
overtake him — he is yet in green and vigorous senihty — 
make allowances for them, remembering that " ye yourselves 20 
are old." So may the Winged Horse, your ancient badge and 
cognizance, still flourish ! so may future Hookers and Seldens 
illustrate your church and chambers ! so may the sparrows, in 
default of more melodious quiristers, unpoisoned hop about 
your walks ! so may the fresh-coloured and cleanly nursery- 25 
maid, who, by leave, airs her playful charge in your stately 
gardens, drop her prettiest blushing curtsey as ye pass, reduc- 
tive of juvenescent emotion ! so may the younkers of this 
generation eye you, pacing your stately terrace, with the 
same superstitious veneration, with which the child Elia gazed 30 
on the Old Worthies that solemnized the parade before ye ! 



I04 WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS 



XIV. WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS. 

We are too hasty when we set down our ancestors in the gross 
for fools, for the monstrous inconsistencies (as they seem to us) 
involved in their creed of witchcraft. In the relations of this 
visible world we find them to have been as rational, and shrewd 
5 to detect an historic anomaly, as ourselves. But when once 
the invisible world was supposed to be opened, and the lawless 
agency of bad spirits assumed, what measures of probability, of 
decency, of fitness, or proportion — of that which distinguishes 
the likely from the palpable absurd — could they have to guide 

lo them in the rejection or admission of any particular testimony? 
— That maidens pined away, wasting inwardly as their waxen 
images consumed before a fire — that corn was lodged, and 
cattle lamed — that whirlwinds uptore in diabolic revelry the 
oaks of the forest — or that spits and kettles only danced a 

15 fearful-innocent vagary about some rustic's kitchen when no 
wind was stirring — were all equally probable where no law of 
agency was understood. That the prince of the powers of dark- 
ness, passing by the flower and pomp of the earth, should lay 
preposterous siege to the weak fantasy of indigent eld — has 

20 neither likelihood nor unlikelihood a priori to us, who have 
no measure to guess at his policy, or standard to estimate 
what rate those anile souls may fetch in the devil's market. 
Nor, when the wicked are expressly symbolized by a goat, 
was it to be wondered at so much, that he should come 

25 sometimes in that body, and assert his metaphor. — That 
the intercourse was opened at all between both worlds was 
perhaps the mistake — but that once assumed, I see no 
reason for disbelieving one attested story of this nature more 
than another on the score of absurdity. There is no law 

30 to judge of the lawless, or canon by which a dream may be 
criticized. 



WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS 105 

I have sometimes thought that I could not have existed in 
the days of received witchcraft ; that I could not have slept 
in a village where one of those reputed hags dwelt. Our 
ancestors were bolder or more obtuse. Amidst the universal 
belief that these wretches were in league with the author of 5 
all evil, holding hell tributary to their muttering, no simple 
Justice of the Peace seems to have scrupled issuing, or silly 
Headborough serving, a warrant upon them — as if they should 
subpoena Satan ! — Prospero in his boat, with his books and 
wand about him, suffers himself to be conveyed away at the 10 
mercy of his enemies to an unknown island. He might have 
raised a storm or two, we think, on the passage. His acquies- 
cence is an exact analogy to the non-resistance of witches to 
the constituted powers. — What stops the Fiend in Spenser 
from tearing Guyon to pieces — or who had made it a condi- 15 
tion of his prey, that Guyon must take assay of the glorious 
bait — we have no guess. We do not know the laws of that 
country. 

From my childhood I was extremely inquisitive about witches 
and witch-stories. My maid, and more legendary aunt, sup- 20 
plied me with good store. But I shall mention the accident 
which directed my curiosity originally into this cliannel. In 
my father's book-closet, the History of the Bible, by Stack- 
house, occupied a distinguished station. The pictures with 
which it abounds — one of the ark, in particular, and another 25 
of Solomon's temple, delineated with all the fidelity of ocular 
admeasurement, as if the artist had been upon the spot — 
attracted my childish attention. There was a picture, too, of 
the Witch raising up Samuel, which I wish that I had never 
seen. We shall come to that hereafter. Stackhouse is in two 30 
huge tomes — and there was a pleasure in removing folios of 
that magnitude, which, with infinite straining, was as much as 
I could manage from the situation which they occupied upon 
an upper shelf. I have not met with the work from that time 



I06 WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS 

to this, but I remember it consisted of Old Testament stories, 
orderly set down, with the objection appended to each story, 
and the solutio?t of the objection regularly tacked to that. 
The objection was a summary of whatever difficulties had been 

5 • opposed to the credibiUty of the history, by the shrewdness 
of ancient or modern infideUty, drawn up with an almost com- 
pHmentary excess of candour. The solution was brief, modest, 
and satisfactory. The bane and antidote were both before 
you. To doubts so put, and so quashed, there seemed to be 

lo an end for ever. The dragon lay dead, for the foot of the 
veriest babe to trample on. But — hke as was rather feared 
than realized from that slain monster in Spenser — from the 
womb of those crushed errors young dragonets would creep, 
exceeding the prowess of so tender a Saint George as myself 

15 to vanquish. The habit of expecting objections to every pas- 
sage, set me upon starting more objections, for the glory of 
finding a solution of my own for them. I became staggered 
and perplexed, a sceptic in long-coats. The pretty Bible 
stories which I had read, or heard read in church, lost their 

20 purity and sincerity of impression, and were turned into so 
many historic or chronologic theses to be defended against 
whatever impugners. I was not to disbeheve them, but — 
the next thing to that — I was to be quite sure that some 
one or other would or had disbeheved them. Next to mak- 

25 ing a child an infidel, is the letting him know that there are 
infidels at all. CreduHty is the man's weakness, but the child's 
strength. O, how ugly sound scriptural doubts from the mouth 
of a babe and a suckUng ! — I should have lost myself in these 
mazes, and have pined away, I think, with such unfit sustenance 

30 as these husks afforded, but for a fortunate piece of- ill- fortune, 
which about this time befell me. Turning over the picture of 
the ark with too much haste, I unhappily made a breach in 
its ingenious fabric — driving my inconsiderate fingers right 
through the two larger quadrupeds — the elephant and the 



WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS IO7 

camel — that stare (as well they might) out of the two last 
windows next the steerage in that unique piece of naval archi- 
tecture. Stackhouse was henceforth locked up, and became 
an interdicted treasure. With the book, the objections and 
solutions gradually cleared out of my head, and have seldom s 
returned since in any force to trouble me. — But there was 
one impression which I had imbibed from Stackhouse, which 
no lock or bar could shut out, and which was destined to try 
my childish nerves rather more seriously. — That detestable 
picture ! ^° 

I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors. The night-time 
sohtude, and the dark, were my hell. The sufferings I endured 
in this nature would justify the expression. I never laid my 
head on my pillow, I suppose, from the fourth to the seventh 
or eighth year of my hfe — so far as memory serves in things so 1 5 
long ago — without an assurance, which realized its own proph- 
ecy, of seeing some frightful spectre. Be old Stackhouse then 
acquitted in part, if I say, that to his picture of the Witch rais- 
ing up Samuel — (O that old man covered with a mantle !) I 
owe — not my midnight terrors, the hell of my infancy — but 20 
the shape and manner of their visitation. It was he who dressed 
up for me a hag that nightly sate upon my pillow — a sure bed- 
fellow, when my aunt or my maid was far from me. All day 
long, while the book was permitted me, I dreamed waking over 
his delineation, and at night (if I may use so bold an expres- 25 
sion) awoke into sleep, and found the vision true. I durst not, 
even in the daylight, once enter the chamber where I slept, 
without my face turned to the window, aversely from the bed 
where my witch-ridden pillow was, — Parents do not know what 
they do when they leave tender babes alone to go to sleep in 30 
the dark. The feeling about for a friendly arm — the hoping 
for a familiar voice — when they wake screaming — and find 
none to soothe them — what a terrible shaking it is to their 
poor nerves ! The keeping them up till midnight, through 



I08 WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS 

candle-light and the unwholesome hours, as they are called, 
— would, I am satisfied, in a medical point of view, prove the 
better caution. — That detestable picture, as I have said, gave 
the fashion to my dreams — if dreams they were — for the scene 
5 of them was invariably the room in which I lay. Had I never 
met with the picture, the fears would have come self-pictured 
in some shape or other — 

Headless bear, blackman, or ape, 

but, as it was, my imaginations took that form. — It is not 

lo book, or picture, or the stories of foolish servants, which create 
these terrors in children. They can at most but give them 
a direction. Dear little T. H., who of all children has been 
brought up with the most scrupulous exclusion of every taint 
of superstition — who was never allowed to hear of goblin or 

1 5 apparition, or scarcely to be told of bad men, or to read or hear 
of any distressing story — finds all this world of fear, from which 
he has been so rigidly excluded ab extra, in his own " thick- 
coming fancies ; " and from his little midnight pillow, this nurse- 
child of optimism will start at shapes, unborrowed of tradition, 

20 in sweats to which the reveries of the cell-damned murderer 
are tranquillity. 

Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire — stories of Celaeno 
and the Harpies — may reproduce themselves in the brain of 
superstition — but they were there before. They are tran- 

25 scripts, types — the archetypes are in us, and eternal. How 
else should the recital of that, which we know in a waking sense 
to be false, come to affect us at all? — or 

Names, whose sense we see not, 



Fray us with things that be not? 

30 Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such objects, 
considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us 
bodily injury? — O, least of all ! These terrors are of older 



WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS IO9 

Standing. They date beyond body — or, without the body, they 
would have been the same. All the cruel, tormenting, defined 
devils in Dante — tearing, mangling, choking, stifling, scorching 
demons — are they one-half so fearful to the spirit of a man, 
as the simple idea of a spirit unembodied following him — 5 

Like one that on a lonesome road 

Doth walk in fear and dread, 

And having once turn'd round, walks on, 

And turns no more his head ; 

Because he knows a frightful fiend 10 

Doth close behind him tread.i 

That the kind of fear here treated of is purely spiritual — 
that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless upon earth 
— that it predominates in the period of sinless infancy — are 
difficulties, the solution of which might afford some probable 15 
insight into our ante-mundane condition, and a peep at least 
into the shadow-land of pre-existence. 

My night fancies have long ceased to be afflictive. I confess 
an occasional nightmare ; but I do not, as in early youth, keep 
a stud of them. Fiendish faces, with the extinguished taper, 20 
will come and look at me ; but I know them for mockeries, even 
while I cannot elude their presence, and I fight and grapple 
with them. For the credit of my imagination, I am almost 
ashamed to say how tame and prosaic my dreams are grown. 
They are never romantic, seldom even rural. They are of 25 
architecture and of buildings — cities abroad, which I have 
never seen, and hardly have hope to see. I have traversed, 
for the seeming length of a natural day, Rome, Amsterdam, 
Paris, Lisbon — their churches, palaces, squares, market-places, 
shops, suburbs, ruins, with an inexpressible sense of delight — 30 
a map-like distinctness of trace — and a daylight vividness of 
vision, that was all but being awake. — I have formerly travelled 

1 Mr. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. 



no WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS 

among the Westmoreland fells — my highest Alps, — but they 
are objects too mighty for the grasp of my dreaming recogni- 
tion ; and I have again and again awoke with ineffectual strug- 
gles of the inner eye, to make out a shape, in any way whatever, 
5 of Helvellyn. Methought I was in that country, but the moun- 
tains were gone. The poverty of my dreams mortifies me. 
There is Coleridge, at his will can conjure up icy domes, and 
pleasure-houses for Kubla Khan, and Abyssinian maids, and 
songs of Abara, and caverns, 

lo Where Alph, the sacred river, runs, 

to solace his night solitudes — when I cannot muster a fiddle. 
Barry Cornwall has his tritons and his nereids gambolling before 
him in nocturnal visions, and proclaiming sons born to Neptune 
— when my stretch of imaginative activity can hardly, in the 

15 night season, raise up the ghost of a fish-wife. To set my fail- 
ures in somewhat a mortifying light — it was after reading the 
noble Dream of this poet, that my fancy ran strong upon these 
marine spectra ; and the poor plastic power, such as it is, within 
me set to work, to humour my folly in a sort of dream that very 

20 night. Methought I was upon the ocean billows at some sea 
nuptials, riding and mounted high, with the customary train 
sounding their conchs before me (I myself, you may be sure, 
the leading god), and jollily we went careering over the main, 
till just where Ino Leucothea should have greeted me (I think \ 

25 it was Ino) with a white embrace, the billows gradually subsid- 
ing, fell from a sea-roughness to a sea-calm, and thence to a 
river-motion, and that river (as happens in the familiarization 
of dreams) was no other than the gentle Thames, which landed 
me, in the wafture of a placid wave or two, alone, safe and 

30 inglorious, somewhere at the foot of Lambeth Palace. 

The degree of the soul's creativeness in sleep might furnish 
no whimsical criterion of the quantum of poetical faculty resi- 
dent in the same soul waking. An old gentleman, a friend of 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT III 

mine, and a humourist, used to carry this notion so far, that 
when he saw any striphng of his acquaintance ambitious of 
becoming a poet, his first question would be, — " Young man, 
what sort of dreams have you? " I have so much faith in my 
old friend's theory, that when I feel that idle vein returning 5 
upon me, I presently subside into my proper element of prose, 
remembering those eluding nereids, and that inauspicious inland 
landing. 

XV. GRACE BEFORE MEAT 

The custom of saying grace at meals had, probably, its origin 
in the early times of the world, and the hunter-state of man, 10 
when dinners were precarious things, and a full meal was some- 
thing more than a common blessing ; when a bellyful was a 
windfall, and looked like a special providence. In the shouts 
and triumphal songs with which, after a season of sharp absti- 
nence, a lucky booty of deer's or goat's flesh would naturally 15 
be ushered home, existed, perhaps, the germ of the modern 
grace. It is not otherwise easy to be understood, why the 
blessing of food — the act of eating — should have had a par- 
ticular expression of thanksgiving annexed to it, distinct from 
that implied and silent gratitude with which we are expected 20 
to enter upon the enjoyment of the many other various gifts 
and good things of existence. 

I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other 
occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want 
a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight 25 
ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why 
have we none for books, those spiritual repasts — a grace before 
Milton — a grace before Shakespeare — a devotional exercise 
proper to be said before reading the Faerie Queene? — but, 
the received ritual having prescribed these forms to the solitary 30 
ceremony of manducation, I shall confine my observations to 



112 GRACE BEFORE MEAT 

the experience which I have had of the grace, properly so 
called ; commending my new scheme for extension to a niche 
in the grand philosophical, poetical, and perchance in part 
heretical, liturgy, now compiling by my friend Homo Humanus, 
5 for the use of a certain snug congregation of Utopian Rabe- 
Isesian Christians, no matter where assembled. 

The form then of the benediction before eating has its 
beauty at a poor man's table, or at the simple and unpro- 
vocative repast of children. It is here that the grace becomes 

10 exceedingly graceful. The indigent man, who hardly knows 
whether he shall have a meal the next day or not, sits down 
to his fare with a present sense of the blessing, which can be 
but feebly acted by the rich, into whose minds the conception 
of wanting a dinner could never, but by some extreme theory, 

15 have entered. The proper end of food — the animal suste- 
nance — is barely contemplated by them. The poor man's 
bread is his daily bread, literally his bread for the day. Their 
courses are perennial. 

Again, the plainest diet seems the fittest to be preceded by 

20 the grace. That which is least stimulative to appetite, leaves 
the mind most free for foreign considerations. A man may 
feel thankful, heartily thankful, over a dish of plain mutton 
with turnips, and have leisure to reflect upon the ordinance 
and institution of eating ; when he shall confess a perturbation 

25 of mind, inconsistent with the purposes of the grace, at the 
presence of venison or turtle. When I have sate (a rarus 
hospes) at rich men's tables, with the savoury soup and messes 
steaming up the nostrils, and moistening the lips of the guests 
with desire and a distracted choice, I have felt the introduc- 

30 tion of that ceremony to be unseasonable. With the ravenous 
orgasm upon you, it seems impertinent to interpose a religious 
sentiment. It is a confusion of purpose to mutter out praises 
from a mouth that waters. The heats of epicurism put out 
the gentle flame of devotion. The incense which rises round 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT II3 

is pagan, and the belly-god intercepts it for his own. The 
very excess of the provision beyond the needs, takes away all 
sense of proportion between the end and means. The giver 
is veiled by his gifts. You are startled at the injustice of 
returning thanks — for what ? — for having too much, while 5 
so many starve. It is to praise the Gods amiss. 

I have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce consciously 
perhaps, by the good man who says the grace. I have seen 
it in clergymen and others — a sort of shame — a sense of 
the co-presence of circumstances which unhallow the blessing. 10 
After a devotional tone put on for a few seconds, how rapidly 
the speaker will fall into his common voice, helping himself 
or his neighbour, as if to get rid of some uneasy sensation of 
hypocrisy. Not that the good man was a hypocrite, or was 
not most conscientious in the discharge of the duty; but he 15 
felt in his inmost mind the incompatibility of the scene and 
the viands before him with the exercise of a calm and rational 
gratitude. 

I hear somebody exclaim, — Would you have Christians sit 
down at table, like hogs to their troughs, without remembering 20 
the Giver? — no — I would have them sit down as Christians, 
remembering the Giver, and less like hogs. Or if their appe- 
tites must run riot, and they must pamper themselves with 
delicacies for which east and west are ransacked, I would have 
them postpone their benediction to a fitter season, when appe- 25 
tite is laid ; when the still small voice can be heard, and the 
reason of the grace returns — with temperate diet and restricted 
dishes. Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for 
thanksgiving. When Jeshurun waxed fat, we read that he 
kicked. Virgil knew the harpy-nature better, when he put 30 
into the mouth of Celseno anything but a blessing. We may 
be gratefully sensible of the deliciousness of some kinds of food 
beyond others, though that is a meaner and inferior gratitude : 
but the proper object of the grace is sustenance, not relishes ; 



114 GRACE BEFORE MEAT 

daily bread, not delicacies ; the means of life, and not the means 
of pampering the carcass. With what frame or composure, I 
wonder, can a city chaplain pronounce his benediction at 
some great Hall feast, when he knows that his last concluding 
5 pious word^ — and that in all probability, the sacred name 
which he preaches — is but the signal for so many impatient 
harpies to commence their foul orgies, with as little sense of 
true thankfulness (which is temperance) as those Virgihan 
fowl ! It is well if the good man himself does not feel his 
lo devotions a little clouded, those foggy sensuous steams min- 
gling with and polluting the pure altar sacrifice. 

The severest satire upon full tables and surfeits is the ban- 
quet which Satan, in the Paradise Regained, provides for a 
temptation in the wilderness : 

15 A table richly spread in regal mode. 

With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort 
And savour ; beasts of chase, or fowl of game, 
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boil'd 
Gris-amber-steam'd ; all fish from sea or shore, 

20 Freshet or purling brook, for which was drain'd 

Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast. 

The tempter, I warrant you, thought these cates would go 
down without the recommendatory preface of a benediction. 
They are like to be short graces where the devil plays the 

25 host. — I am afraid the poet wants his usual decorum in this 
place. Was he thinking of the old Roman luxury, or of a 
gaudy day at Cambridge? This was a temptation fitter for 
a Heliogabalus. The whole banquet is too civic and culinary, 
and the accompaniments altogether a profanation of that deep, 

30 abstracted, holy scene. The mighty artillery of sauces, which 
the cook-fiend conjures up, is out of proportion to the simple 
wants and plain hunger of the guest. He that disturbed him 
in his dreams, from his dreams might have been taught better. 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT II5 

To the temperate fantasies of the famished Son of God, what 
sort of feasts presented themselves ? — He dreamed indeed, 

As appetite is wont to dream, 

Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet. 

But what meats? 5 

Him thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood, 

And saw the ravens with their horny beaks 

Food to Ehjah bringing even and morn ; 

Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought : 

He saw the prophet also how he fled 10 

Into the desert, and how there he slept 

Under a juniper ; then how awaked 

He found his supper on the coals prepared, 

And by the angel was bid rise and eat, 

And ate the second time after repose, 15 

The strength whereof sufficed him forty days : 

Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook, 

Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 

Nothing in Milton is fineher fancied than these temperate 
dreams of the divine Hungerer. To which of these two vis- 20 
ionary banquets, think you, would the introduction of what is 
called the grace have been most fitting and pertinent. 

Theoretically I am no enemy to graces ; but practically I 
own that (before meat especially) they seem to involve some- 
thing awkward and unseasonable. Our appetites, of one or 25 
another kind, are excellent spurs to our reason, which might 
otherwise but feebly set about the great ends of preserving 
and continuing the species. They are fit blessings to be 
contemplated at a distance with a becoming gratitude ; but 
the moment of appetite (the judicious reader will apprehend 30 
me) is, perhaps, the least fit season for that exercise. The 
Quakers who go about their business, of every description, with 
more calmness than we, have more title to the use of these 



Il6 GRACE BEFORE MEAT 

benedictory prefaces. I have always admired their silent grace, 
and the more because I have observed their applications to 
the meat and drink following to be less passionate and sensual 
than ours. They are neither gluttons nor wine-bibbers as a 
5 people. They eat, as a horse bolts his chopped hay, with indif- 
ference, calmness, and cleanly circumstances. They neither 
grease nor slop themselves. When I see a citizen in his bib 
and tucker, I cannot imagine it a surplice. 

I am no Quaker at my food. I confess I am not indiffer- 

10 ent to the kinds of it. Those unctuous morsels of deer's flesh 
were not made to be received with dispassionate services. I 
hate a man who swallows it, affecting not to know what he is 
eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters. I shrink instinc- 
tively from one who professes to like minced veal. There is a 

15 physiognomical character in the tastes for food. C holds 

that a man cannot have a pure mind who refuses apple-dump- 
lings. I am not certain but he is right. With the decay of 
my first innocence, I confess a less and less relish daily for 
those innocuous cates. The whole vegetable tribe have lost 

20 their gust with me. Only I stick to asparagus, which still seems 
to inspire gentle thoughts. I am impatient and querulous under 
culinary disappointments, as to come home at the dinner-hour, 
for instance, expecting some savoury mess, and to find one 
quite tasteless and sapidless. Butter ill melted — that com- 

25 monest of kitchen failures — puts me beside my tenour. — The 
author of the Rambler used to make inarticulate animal noises 
over a favourite food. Was this the music quite proper to be 
preceded by the grace? or would the pious man have done 
better to postpone his devotions to a season when the blessing 

30 might be contemplated with less perturbation ? I quarrel with 
no man's tastes, nor would set my thin face against those excel- 
lent things, in their way, jollity and feasting. But as these 
exercises, however laudable, have little in them of grace or 
gracefulness, a man should be sure, before he ventures so to 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT II7 

grace them, that while he is pretending his devotions other- 
where, he is not secretly kissing his hand to some great fish — 
his Dagon — with a special consecration of no ark but the fat 
tureen before him. Graces are the sweet preluding strains to 
the banquets of angels and children ; to the roots and severer 5 
repasts of the Chartreuse ; to the slender, but not slenderly 
acknowledged, refection of the poor and humble man : but at 
the heaped-up boards of the pampered and the luxurious they 
become of dissonant mood, less timed and tuned to the occa- 
sion, methinks, than the noise of those better befitting organs 10 
would be, which children hear tales of at Hog's Norton. We 
sit too long at our meals, or are too curious in the study of them, 
or too disordered in our application to them, or engross too 
great a portion of those good things (which should be com- 
mon) to our share, to be able with any grace to say grace. 15 
To be thankful for what we grasp exceeding our proportion is 
to add hypocrisy to injustice. A lurking sense of this truth is 
what makes the performance of this duty so cold and spiritless 
a service at most tables. In houses where the grace is as 
indispensable as the napkin, who has not seen that never-settled 20 
question arise, as to who shall say it ; while the good man of 
the house and the visitor clergyman, or some other guest belike 
of next authority from years or gravity, shall be bandying about 
the ofiice between them as a matter of compliment, each of 
them not unwilling to shift the awkward burthen of an equivocal 25 
duty from his own shoulders ? 

I once drank tea in company with two Methodist divines 
of different persuasions, whom it was my fortune to introduce 
to each other for the first time that evening. Before the first 
cup was handed round, one of these reverend gentlemen put 30 
it to the other, with all due solemnity, whether he chose to say 
anything. It seems it is the custom with some sectaries to put 
up a short prayer before this meal also. His reverend brother 
did not at first quite apprehend him, but upon an explanation, 



Il8 GRACE BEFORE MEAT 

with little less importance he made answer, that it was not a 
custom known in his church : in which courteous evasion the 
other acquiescing for good manners' sake, or in comphance 
with a weak brother, the supplementary or tea-grace was waived 
5 altogether. With what spirit might not Lucian have painted 
two priests, of his religion, playing into each other's hands the 
compliment of performing or omitting a sacrifice, — the hungry 
God meantime, doubtful of his incense, with expectant nostrils 
hovering over the two flamens, and (as between two stools) 

10 going away in the end without his supper. 

A short form upon these occasions is felt to want rever- 
ence ; a long one, I am afraid, cannot escape the charge of 
impertinence. I do not quite approve of the epigrammatic 
conciseness with which that equivocal wag (but my pleasant 

15 school-fellow) C. V. L., when importuned for a grace, used to 
inquire, first slyly leering down the table, "Is there no clergy- 
man here?" — significantly adding, ''Thank G — ." Nor do 
I think our old form at school quite pertinent, where we 
were used to preface our bald bread and cheese suppers with a 

20 preamble connecting with that humble blessing a recognition 
of benefits the most awful and overwhelming to the imagina- 
tion which religion has to offer. No7i tufic illis erat locus. I 
remember we were put to it to reconcile the phrase " good 
creatures," upon which the blessing rested, with the fare set 

25 before us, wilfully understanding that expression in a low and 
animal sense, — till some one recalled a legend, which told 
how in the golden days of Christ's, the young Hospitallers 
were wont to have smoking joints of roast meat upon their 
nightly boards, till some pious benefactor, commiserating the 

30 decencies, rather than the palates, of the children, commuted 
our flesh for garments, and gave us — horresco referens — 
trousers instead of mutton. 



DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE II9 



XVI. DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE 

Children love to listen to stories about their elders, when 
they were children : to stretch their imagination to the con- 
ception of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandame, whom they 
never saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones crept about 
me the other evening to hear about their great-grandmother 5 
Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk (a hundred times 
bigger than that in which they and papa lived) which had been 
the scene — so at least it was generally believed in that part 
of the country — of the tragic incidents which they had lately 
become familiar with from the ballad of the Children in the 10 
Wood. Certain it is that the whole story of the children and 
their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon 
the chimney-piece of the great hall, the whole story down to the 
Robin Redbreasts, till a foolish rich person pulled it down to 
set up a marble one of modern invention in its stead, with no 15 
story upon it. Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's 
looks, too tender to be called upbraiding. Then I went on to 
say, how religious and how good their great-grandmother Field. 
was, how beloved and respected by everybody, though she was 
not indeed the mistress of this great house, but had only the 20 
charge of it (and yet in some respects she might be said to be 
the mistress of it too) committed to her by the owner, who 
preferred living in a newer and more fashionable mansion which 
he had purchased somewhere in the adjoining county ; but still 
she lived in it in a manner as if it had been her own, and kept 25 
up the dignity of the great house in a sort while she lived, which 
afterwards came to decay, and was nearly pulled down, and all 
its old ornaments stripped and carried away to the owner's 
other house, where they were set up, and looked as awkward 
as if some one were to carry away the old tombs they had seen 30 
h tely at the Abbey, and stick them up 5? I-ady C.'s tawdry gilt 



I20 DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE 

drawing-room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, "■ that 
would be foolish, indeed." And then I told how, when she 
came to die, her funeral was attended by a concourse of all 
the poor, and some of the gentry too, of the neighbourhood 
5 for many miles round, to show their respect for her memory, 
because she had been such a good and religious woman ; so 
good indeed that she knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay, and 
a great part of the Testament besides. Here little Alice spread 
her hands. Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful person 

lo their great-grandmother Field once was : and how in her youth 
she was esteemed the best dancer — here Alice's little right foot 
played an involuntary movement, till upon my looking grave, 
it desisted — the best dancer, I was saying, in the county, till 
a cruel disease, called cancer, came, and bowed her down with 

1 5 pain ; but it could never bend her good spirits, or make them 
stoop, but they were still upright, because she was so good and 
religious. Then I told how she used to sleep by herself in a 
lone chamber of the great lone house ; and how she believed 
that an apparition of two infants was to be seen at midnight 

20 gliding up and down the great staircase near where she slept, 
but she said "those innocents would do her no harm;" and 
how frightened I used to be, though in those days I had my 
maid to sleep with me, because I was never half so good or 
religious as she — and yet I never saw the infants. Here John 

25 expanded all his eyebrows and tried to look courageous. Then 
I told how good she was to all her grandchildren, having us to 
the great house in the holidays, where I in particular used to 
spend many hours by myself, in gazing upon the old busts of 
the twelve Caesars, that had been Emperors of Rome, till the 

30 old marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be turned 
>ipto marble with them ; how I could never be tired with roam- 
ling about-that huge mansion, with its vast empty rooms, with 
o^ fffeheir worn-put hangings, fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken 
jjpanels, witji the gilding almost rubbed out — sometimes in the 



DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE 121 

spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I had ahuost to myself, 
unless when now and then a solitary gardening man would cross 
me — and how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, 
without my ever offering to pluck them, because they were for- 
bidden fruit, unless now and then, — and because I had more s 
pleasure in strolHng about among the old melancholy-looking 
yew-trees, or the lirs, and picking up the red berries, and the 
fir apples, which were good for nothing but to look at — or in 
lying about upon the fresh grass, with all the fine garden smells 
around me — or basking in the orangery, till I could almost lo 
fancy myself ripening too along with the oranges and the limes 
in that grateful warmth — or in watching the dace that darted 
to and fro in the fi'sh-pond, at the bottom of the garden, with 
here and there a great sulky pike hanging midway down the 
water in silent state, as if it mocked at their impertinent frisk- 1 5 
ings, — I had more pleasure in these busy-idle diversions than 
in all the sweet flavours of peaches, nectarines, oranges, and 
such like common baits of children. Here John slyly depos- 
ited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes which, not unob- 
served by Ahce, he had meditated dividing with her, and both 20 
seemed willing to relinquish them for the present as irrelevant. 
Then in somewhat a more heightened tone, I told how, though 
their great-grandmother Field loved all her grandchildren, yet 
in an especial manner she might be said to love their uncle, 

John L , because he was so handsome and spirited a youth, 25 

and a king to the rest of us ; and, instead of moping about 
in solitary corners, like some of us, he would mount the most 
mettlesome horse he could get, when but an imp no bigger 
than themselves, and make it carry him half over the county 
in a morning, and join the Ixunters ,)vhen there were any out 30 
— and yet he loved the old,great,^ou;^^-ajnd-g^rfi,ejns,|^^^ 
had too much spirit to be alwajys^pp,i:;t,..upji\^j.t^j,^^,thp^^^ 
ries — and how their uncle grew i^^p ,tp,;mar^'s.,e^^^t^.,^s,J)ra^ 
he was handsome, to the a4wration.pfe7eryb.od^^,but.9fi 1^,^i|r 



122 DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE 

great-grandmother Field most especially ; and how he used to 
carry me upon his back when 1 was a lame-footed boy — for 
he was a good bit older than me — many a mile when I could 
not walk for pain ; — and how in after-life he became lame- 
5 footed too, and I did not always (I fear) make allowance enough 
for him when he was impatient, and in pain, nor remember suf- 
ficiently how considerate he had been to me when I w^as lame- 
footed ; and how when he died, though he had not been dead 
an hour, it seemed as if he had died a great while ago, such a 

10 distance there is betwixt Ufe and death ; and how I bore his 
death as I thought pretty well at first, but afterwards it haunted 
and haunted me ; and though I did not cry or take it to heart 
as some do, and as I think he would have done if I had died, 
yet I missed him all day long, and knew not till then how much 

IS I had loved him. I missed his kindness, and I missed his 
crossness, and wished him to be alive again, to be quarrelling 
with him (for we quarrelled sometimes), rather than not have 
him again, and was as uneasy without him, as he, their poor 
uncle, must have been when the doctor took off his limb. Here 

20 the children fell a-crying, and asked if their little mourning 
which they had on was not for uncle John, and they looked 
up, and prayed me not to go on about their uncle, but to tell 
them some stories about their pretty dead mother. Then I 
told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes 

25 in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W n ; 

and, as much as children could understand, I explained to them 
what coyness, and difficulty, and denial meant in maidens — 
when suddenly, turning to- Alice, the soul of the first Alice 
looked out at her eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, 

30 that I became in doubt which of them stood there before me, 
or whose that bright hair was; ; and while I stood gazing, both 
the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and 
still receding till nothing at last but two mournful features were 
seen in the uttermost distance^ ^vhich, without speech, strangely 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 1 23 

impressed upon me the effects of speech : " We are not of 
Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children 
of Alice call Bartrum father. We are nothing ; less than nothing, 
and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must 
wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages, before we 

have existence, and a name " and immediately awaking, I 

found myself quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where 
I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by 
my side — but John L. (or James Elia) was gone forever. 



XVn. ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 

The casual sight of an old Play Bill, which I picked up the 10 
other day — I know not by what chance it was preserved so 
long — tempts me to call to mind a few of the Players, who 
make the principal figure in it. It presents the cast of parts 
in the Twelfth Night at the old Drury Lane Theatre two-and- 
thirty years ago. There is something very touching in these 15 
old remembrances. They make us think how we once used to 
read a Play Bill — not, as now peradventure, singling out a 
favourite performer, and casting a negligent eye over the rest ; 
but spelling out every name, down to the very mutes and 
servants of the scene : — when it was a matter of no small 20 
moment to us whether Whitfield, or Packer, took the part of 
Fabian ; when Benson and Burton and Phillimore — names of 
small account — had an importance beyond what we can be 
content to attribute now to the time's best actors. — " Orsino, 
by Mr. Barrymore." — What a full Shakspearean sound it car- 25 
ries ! how fresh to memory arise the image, and the manner, 
of the gentle actor ! 

Those who have only seen Mrs. Jordan within the last ten 
or fifteen years, can have no adequate notion of her performance 
of such parts as Ophelia ; Helena, in All 's Well that Ends 30 



124 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 

Well ; and Viola in this play. Her voice had latterly acquired 
a coarseness, which suited well enough with her Nells and Hoy- 
dens, but in those days it sank, with her steady melting eye, 
into the heart. Her joyous parts — in which her memory now 
5 chiefly lives — in her youth were outdone by her plaintive ones. 
There is no giving an account how she delivered the disguised 
story of her love for Orsino. It was no set speech, that she 
had foreseen, so as to weave it into an harmonious period, Hne 
necessarily following line, to make up the music — yet I have 

10 heard it so spoken, or rather read, not without its grace and 
beauty — but, when she had declared her sister's history to be 
a "blank," and that she "never told her love," there was a 
pause, as if the story had ended — and then the image of the 
"worm in the bud " came up as a new suggestion — and the 

15 heightened image of " Patience " still followed after that, as by 
some growing (and not mechanical) process, thought spring- 
ing up after thought, I would almost say, as they were watered 
by her tears. So in those fine lines — 

Write loyal cantons of contemned love — 
20 Halloo your name to the reverberate hills — 

there was no preparation made in the foregoing image for that 
which was to follow. She used no rhetoric in her passion ; 
or it was nature's own rhetoric, most legitimate then, when it 
seemed altogether without rule or law. 

25 Mrs. Powel (now Mrs. Renard), then in the pride of her 
beauty, made an admirable Olivia. She was particularly excel- 
lent in her unbending scenes in conversation with the Clown. 
I have seen some Olivias — and those very sensible actresses 
too — who in these interlocutions have seemed to set their wits 

30 at the jester, and to vie conceits with him in downright emula- 
tion. But she used him for her sport, like what he was, to 
trifle a leisure sentence or two with, and then to be dismissed, 
and she to be the Great Lady still. She touched the imperious 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 1 25 

fantastic humour of the character with nicety. Her fine spa- 
cious person filled the scene. 

The part of Malvolio has in my judgment been so often 
misunderstood, and the general merits of the actor, who then 
played it, so unduly appreciated, that I shall hope for pardon, 5 
if I am a little prolix upon these points. 

Of all the actors who flourished in my time — a melancholy 
phrase if taken aright, reader — Bensley had most of the swell 
of soul, was greatest in the deKvery of heroic conceptions, the 
emotions consequent upon the presentment of a great idea to 10 
the fancy. He had the true poetical enthusiasm — the rarest 
faculty among players. None that I remember possessed even 
a portion of that fine madness which he threw out in Hotspur's 
famous rant about glory, or the transports of the Venetian 
incendiary at the vision of the fired city.^ His voice had the 15 
dissonance, and at times the inspiriting effect of the trumpet. 
His gait was uncouth and stiff, but no way embarrassed by 
affectation ; and the thorough-bred gentleman was uppermost 
in every movement. He seized the moment of passion with 
the greatest truth ; Hke a faithful clock, never striking before 20 
the time ; never anticipating or leading you to anticipate. He 
was totally destitute of trick and artifice. He seemed come 
upon the stage to do the poet's message simply, and he did it 
with as genuine fidelity as the nuncios in Homer deliver the 
errands of the gods. He let the passion or the sentiment 25 
do its own work without prop or bolstering. He would have 
scorned to mountebank it ; and betrayed none of that clever- 
ness which is the bane of serious acting. For that reason, 
his lago was the only endurable one which I remember to 
have seen. No spectator from his action could divine more 30 

1 How lovely the Adriatic whore 

Dress'd in her flames will shine — devouring flames — 

Such as will burn her to her wat'ry bottom, 

And hiss in her foundation. _,. . tt ■ r^ 

Jr'ierre, in Vemce Preserved. 



126 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 

of his artifice than Othello was supposed to do. His confes- 
sions in soliloquy alone put you in possession of the mystery. 
There were no by-intimations to make the audience fancy their 
own discernment so much greater than that of the Moor — 
5 who commonly stands like a great helpless mark set up for 
mine Ancient, and a quantity of barren spectators, to shoot 
their bolts at. The lago of Bensley did not go to work so 
grossly. There was a triumphant tone about the character, 
natural to a general consciousness of power ; but none of that 

lo petty vanity which chuckles and cannot contain itself upon 
any little successful stroke of its knavery — as is common with 
your small villains, and green probationers in mischief. It did 
not clap or crow before its time. It was not a man setting 
his wits at a child, and winking all the while at other children 

15 who are mightily pleased at being let into the secret; but a 
consummate villain entrapping a noble nature into toils, against 
which no discernment was available, where the manner was as 
fathomless as the purpose seemed dark, and without motive. 
The part of Malvolio, in the Twelfth Night, was performed by 

20 Bensley, with a richness and a dignity, of which (to judge from 
some recent castings of that character) the very tradition must 
be worn out from the stage. No manager in those days would 
have dreamed of giving it to Mr. Baddeley, or Mr. Parsons : 
when Bensley was occasionally absent from the theatre, John 

25 Kemble thought it no derogation to succeed to the part. Mal- 
volio is not essentially ludicrous. He becomes comic but by 
accident. He is cold, austere, repelling ; but dignified, con- 
sistent, and, for what appears, rather of an over-stretched 
morality. Maria describes him as a sort of Puritan ; and he 

30 might have worn his gold chain with honour in one of our old 
roundhead families, in the service of a Lambert, or a Lady 
Fairfax. But his morality and his manners are misplaced in 
Illyria. He is opposed to the proper levities of the piece, and 
falls in the unequal contest. Still his pride, or his gravity (call 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 12/ 

it which you will), is inherent, and native to the man, not mock 
or affected, which latter only are fit objects to excite laughter. 
His quality is at the best unlovely, but neither buffoon nor 
contemptible. His bearing is lofty, a little above his station, 
but probably not much above his deserts. We see no reason 5 
why he should not have been brave, honourable, accomplished. 
His careless committal of the ring to the ground (which he 
was commissioned to restore to Cesario), bespeaks a generosity 
of birth and feeling.^ His dialect on all occasions is that of a 
gentleman and a man of education. We must not confound 10 
him with the eternal old, low steward of comedy. He is mas- 
ter of the household to a great Princess ; a dignity probably 
conferred upon him for other respects than age or length of 
service.^ Olivia, at the first indication of his supposed mad- 
ness, declares that she "would not have him miscarry for half 15 
of her dowry." Does this look as if the character was meant 
to appear little or insignificant? Once, indeed, she accuses 
him to his face — of what? — of being " sick of self-love," — 
but with a gentleness and considerateness which could not 
have been, if she had not thought that this particular infirm- 20 
ity shaded some virtues. His rebuke to the knight, and his 
sottish revellers, is sensible and spirited ; and when we take into 

1 Viola. She took the ring from me, I '11 none of it. 

Mai. Come, sir, you peevishly threw it to her; and her will is, it should 
be so returned. If it be worth stooping for, there it lies in your eye ; if not, be 
it his that finds it. — Original footnote. 

2 Mrs. Inchbald seems to have fallen into the common mistake of the 
character in some otherwise sensible observations on this comedy. " It 
might be asked," she says, "whether this credulous, stew^ard was much 
deceived in imputing a degraded taste, in the sentiments of love, to his 
fair lady Olivia, as she actually did fall in love with a domestic, and one 
who, from his extreme youth, was perhaps a greater reproach to her dis- 
cretion than had she cast a tender regard upon her old and faithful 
servant." But where does she gather the fact of his age ? Neither 
Maria nor Fabian ever cast that reproach upon him. 



128 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 

consideration the unprotected condition of his mistress, and the 
strict regard with which her state of real or dissembled mourn- 
ing would draw the eyes of the world upon her house-affairs, 
Malvolio might feel the honour of the family in some sort in his 
5 keeping ; as it appears not that Olivia had any more brothers, 
or kinsmen, to look to it — for Sir Toby had dropped all such 
nice respects at the buttery-hatch. That Malvolio was meant to 
be represented as possessing estimable qualities, the expression 
of the Duke in his anxiety to have him reconciled, almost infers : 

10 " Pursue him, and entreat him to a peace." Even in his abused 
state of chains and darkness, a sort of greatness seems never to 
desert him. He argues highly and well with the supposed Sir 
Topas, and philosophizes gallantly upon his straw.-^ There must 
have been some shadow of worth about the man ; he must have 

15 been something more than a mere vapour — a thing of straw, 
or Jack in office — before Fabian and Maria could have ven- 
tured sending him upon a courting-errand to Olivia. There was 
some consonancy (as he would say) in the undertaking, or the 
jest would have been too bold even for that house of misrule. 

20 There was "example for it," said Malvolio; "the lady of 
the Strachy married the yeoman of the wardrobe." Possibly, 
too, he might remember — for it must have happened about 
his time — an instance of a Duchess of Malfy (a countrywoman 
of Olivia's, and her equal at least) descending from her state to 

25 court a steward : 

The misery of them that are born great! 

They are forced to woo because none dare woo them. 

To be sure, the lady was not very tenderly handled for it by 
her brothers in the sequel, but their vengeance appears to have 

1 Clown. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl ? 
Mai. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird. 
Clown. What thinkest thou of his opinion? 
Mai. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve of his opinion. 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 1 29 

been whetted rather by her presumption in re-marrying at all 
(when they had meditated the keeping of her fortune in their 
family), than by her choice of an inferior, of Antonio's noble 
merits especially, for her husband ; and, besides, Olivia's brother 
was just dead. MalvoKo was a man of reading, and possibly 5 
reflected upon these Hnes, or something like them, in his own . 
country poetry : — 

Ceremony has made many fools. 
It is as easy way unto a duchess 

As to a hatted dame, if her love answer : 10 

But that by timorous honours, pale respects, 
Idle degrees of fear, men make their ways 
Hard of themselves. 

^' 'T is but fortune ; all is fortune. Maria once told me she did 
affect me ; and I have heard herself come thus near, that, 1 5 
should she fancy, it should be one of my complexion." If 
here was no encouragement, the devil is in it. I wish we could 
get at the private history of all this. Between the Countess 
herself, serious or dissembling — for one hardly knows how to 
apprehend this fantastical great lady — and the practices of 20 
that deHcious little piece of mischief, Maria, the man might 
well be rapt into a fool's paradise. 

Bensley, accordingly, threw over the part an air of Spanish 
loftiness. He looked, spake, and moved like an old Castilian. 
He was starch, spruce, opinionated ; but his superstructure of 25 
pride seemed bottomed upon a sense of worth. There was 
something in it beyond the coxcomb. It was big and swelling, 
but you could not be sure that it was hollow. You might wish 
to see it taken down, but you felt that it was upon an elevation. 
He was magnificent from the outset; but when the decent 30 
sobrieties of the character began to give way, and the poison 
of self-love, in his conceit of the Countess's affection, gradually 
to work, you would have thought that the hero of La Mancha 



130 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 

in person stood before you. How he went smiling to himself i 
with what ineffable carelessness would he twirl his gold chain ! 
what a dream it was ! you were infected with the illusion, and 
did not wish that it should be removed ! you had no room for 
5 laughter ! if an unseasonable reflection of morality obtruded 
itself, it was a deep sense of the pitiable infirmity of the man's 
nature, that can lay him open to such frenzies — but in truth 
you rather admired than pitied the lunacy while it lasted — 
you felt that an hour of such mistake was worth an age with 

10 the eyes open. Who would not wish to live but for a day in the 
conceit of such a lady's love as Olivia? Why, the Duke would 
have given his principality but for a quarter of a minute, sleep- 
ing or waking, to have been so deluded. The man seemed to 
tread upon air, to taste manna, to walk with his head in the 

15 clouds, to mate Hyperion. O ! shake not the castles of his 
pride — endure yet for a season, bright moments of confidence 
— " stand still, ye watches of the element," that Malvoho may 
be still in fancy fair Olivia's lord — but fate and retribution 
say no — I hear the mischievous titter of Maria — the witty 

20 taunts of Sir Toby — the still more insupportable triumph of 
the fooHsh knight — the counterfeit Sir Topas is unmasked — 
and "thus the whirligig of time," as the true clown hath it, 
"brings in his revenges." I confess that I never saw the 
catastrophe of this character, while Bensley played it, without 

25 a kind of tragic interest. There was good foolery too. Few 
now remember Dodd. What an Aguecheek the stage lost in 
him ! Lovegrove, who came nearest to the old actors, revived 
the character some few seasons ago, and made it sufficiently 
grotesque ; but Dodd was zV, as it came out of nature's hands. 

30 It might be said to remain in piiris naturalihiis . In express- 
ing slowness of apprehension this actor surpassed all others. 
You could see the first dawn of an idea stealing slowly over 
his countenance, cHmbing up by little and little, with a painful 
process, till it cleared up at last to the fulness of a twilight 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS I31 

conception — its highest meridian. He seemed to keep back 
his intellect, as some have had the power to retard their pulsa- 
tion. The balloon takes less time in filling, than it took to 
cover the expansion of his broad moony face over all its 
quarters with expression. A ghmmer of understanding would 5 
appear in a corner of his eye, and for lack of fuel go put 
again. A part of his forehead would catch a little intelligence, 
and be a long time in communicating it to the remainder. 

I am ill at dates, but I think it is now better than five-and- 
twenty years ago, that walking in the gardens of Gray's Inn 10 
— they were then far finer than they are now — the accursed 
Verulam Buildings had not encroached upon all the east side 
of them, cutting out delicate green crankles, and shouldering 
away one of two of the stately alcoves of the terrace — the 
survivor stands gaping and relationless as if it remembered its 1 5 
brother — they are still the best gardens of any of the Inns of 
Court, my beloved Temple not forgotten — have the gravest 
character, their aspect being altogether reverend and law- 
breathing — Bacon has left the impress of his foot upon their 
gravel walks — taking my afternoon solace on a summer day 20 
upon the aforesaid terrace, a comely sad personage came 
towards me, whom, from his grave air and deportment, I 
judged to be one of the old Benchers of the Inn. He had a 
serious thoughtful forehead, and seemed to be in meditations 
of mortality. As I have an instinctive awe of old Benchers, I 25 
was passing him with that sort of subindicative token of respect 
which one is apt to demonstrate towards a venerable stranger, 
and which rather denotes an inclination to greet him, than 
any positive motion of the body to that effect — a species of 
humility and will-worship which I observe, nine times out of 30 
ten, rather puzzles than pleases the person it is offered to — 
when the face turning full upon me strangely identified itself 
with that of Dodd. Upon close inspection I was not mistaken. 
But could this sad thoughtful countenance be the same vacant 



132 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 

face of folly which I had hailed so often under circumstances 
of gaiety ; which I had never seen without a smile, or recog- 
nized but as the usher of mirth ; that looked out so formally 
flat in Foppington, so frothily pert in Tattle, so impotently 

5 busy in Backbite ; so blankly divested of all meaning, or reso- 
lutely expressive of none, in Acres, in Fribble, and a thousand 
agreeable impertinences ? Was this the face — full of thought 
and carefulness — that had so often divested itself at will of 
every trace of either to give me diversion, to clear my cloudy 

10 face for two or three hours at least of its furrows? Was this 
the face — manly, sober, intelligent — which I had so often 
despised, made mocks at, made merry with? The remem- 
brance of the freedoms which I had taken with it came upon 
me with a reproach of insult. I could have asked it pardon. 

15 I thought it looked upon me with a sense of injury. There is 
something strange as well as sad in seeing actors — your pleas- 
ant fellows particularly — subjected to and suffering the com- 
mon lot — their fortunes, their casualties, their deaths, seem 
to belong to the scene, their actions to be amenable to poetic 

20 justice only. We can hardly connect them with more awful 
responsibilities. The death of this fine actor took place shortly 
after this meeting. He had quitted the stage some months ; 
and as I learned afterwards, had been in the habit of resorting 
daily to these gardens almost to the day of his decease. In 

25 these serious walks probably he was divesting himself of many 
scenic and some real vanities — weaning himself from the 
frivolities of the lesser and the greater theatre — doing gentle 
penance for a life of no very reprehensible fooleries, — taking 
off by degrees the buffoon mask which he might feel he had 

30 worn too long — and rehearsing for a more solemn cast of part. 
Dying, he "put on the weeds of Dominic." ^ 

1 Dodd was a man of reading, and left at his death a choice collec- 
tion of old English literature. I should judge him to have been a man 
of wit. I know one instance of an impromptu which no length of study 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 1 33 

If a few can remember Dodd, many yet living will not easily 
forget the pleasant creature, who in those days enacted the 
part of the Clown to Dodd's Sir Andrew. — Richard, or rather 
Dicky Suett — for so in his lifetime he delighted to be called, 
and time hath ratified the appellation — lieth buried on the 5 
north side of the cemetery of Holy Paul, to whose service his 
nonage and tender years were dedicated. There are who do 
yet remember him at that period — his pipe clear and harmo- 
nious. He would often speak of his chorister days, when he 
was "cherub Dicky." lo 

What clipped his wings, or made it expedient that he should 
exchange the holy for the profane state ; whether he had lost 
his good voice (his best recommendation to that office), 
like Sir John, "with hallooing and singing of anthems;" or 
whether he was adjudged to lack something, even in those 15 
early years, of the gravity indispensable to an occupation 
which professeth to " commerce with the skies " — I could 
never rightly learn; but we find him, after the probation of 
a twelvemonth or so, reverting to a secular condition, and 
become one of us. 20 

I think he was not altogether of that timber out of which 
cathedral seats and sounding-boards are hewed. But if a glad 
heart — kind and therefore glad — be any part of sanctity, 
then might the robe of Motley, with which he invested him- 
self with so much humility after his deprivation, and which he 25 
wore so long with so much blameless satisfaction to himself 
and to the public, be accepted for a surplice — his white stole, 
and albe, 

could have bettered. My merry friend, Jem White, had seen him one 
evening in Aguecheek, and, recognizing Dodd the next day in Fleet 
Street, was irresistibly impelled to take off his hat and salute him as 
the identical Knight of the preceding evening with a " Save you. Sir 
Andrew.^'' Dodd, not at all disconcerted at this unusual address from 
a stranger, with a courteous half -rebuking wave of the hand, put him 
off with an " Away, FoolT 



134 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 

The first fruits of his secularization was an engagement upon 
the boards of Old Drury, at which theatre he commenced, as I 
have been told, with adopting the manner of Parsons in old 
men's characters. At the period in which most of us knew 
5 him, he was no more an imitator than he was in any true sense 
himself imitable. 

He was the Robin Good-Fellow of the stage. He came in 
to trouble all things with a welcome perplexity, himself no whit 
troubled for the matter. He was known, like Puck, by his 

10 note — Ha I Ha! Hal — sometimes deepening to Ho I Ho I 
Ho ! with an irresistible accession derived perhaps remotely 
from his ecclesiastical education, foreign to his prototype of, 
— O La ! Thousands of hearts yet respond to the chuckling 
O La I of Dicky Suett, brought back to their remembrance by 

15 the faithful transcript of his friend Mathews's mimicry. The 
" force of nature could no farther go." He drolled upon the 
stock of these two syllables richer than the cuckoo. 

■ Care, that troubles all the world, was forgotten in his com- 
position. Had he had but two grains (nay, half a grain) of it, 

20 he could never have supported himself upon those two spider's 
strings, which served him (in the latter part of his unmixed 
existence) as legs. A doubt or a scruple must have made him 
totter, a sigh have puffed him down ; the weight of a frown 
had staggered him, a wrinkle made him lose his balance. But 

25 on he went, scrambling upon those airy stilts of his, with Robin 
Good-Fellow, " thorough brake, thorough briar," reckless of a 
scratched face or a torn doublet. 

Shakespeare foresaw him, when he framed his fools and jest- 
ers. They have all the true Suett stamp, a loose and sham- 

30 bling gait, a shppery tongue, this last the ready midwife to 
a without-pain-delivered jest ; in words, light as air, venting 
truths deep as the centre ; with idlest rhymes tagging conceit 
when busiest, singing with Lear in the tempest, or Sir Toby 
at the buttery-hatch. 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 1 35 

Jack Bannister and he had the fortune to be more of per- 
sonal favourites with the town than any actors before or after. 
The diiference, I take it, was this : — Jack was more beloved 
for his sweet, good-natured, moral pretensions. Dicky was 
more liked for his sweet, good-natured, no pretensions at all. 5 
Your whole conscience stirred with Bannister's performance of 
Walter in the Children in the Wood — but Dicky seemed like 
a thing, as Shakespeare says of Love, too young to know what 
conscience is. He put us into Vesta's days. Evil fled before 
him — not as from Jack, as from an antagonist, — but because 10 
it could not touch him, any more than a cannon-ball a fly. 
He was delivered from the burthen of that death ; and when 
Death came himself, not in metaphor, to fetch Dicky, it is 
recorded of him by Robert Palmer, who kindly watched his 
exit, that he received the last stroke, neither varying his 15 
accustomed tranquillity, nor tune, with the simple exclama- 
tion, worthy to have been recorded in his epitaph — O La ! 
O La ! Bobby I 

The elder Palmer (of stage- treading celebrity) commonly 
played Sir Toby in those days ; but there is a solidity of wit 20 
in the jests of that half-Falstaff which he did not quite fill out. 
He was as much too showy, as Moody (who sometimes took 
the part) was dry and sottish. In sock or buskin there was 
an air of swaggering gentility about Jack Palmer. He was a 
gentleman with a slight infusion of the footman. His brother 25 
Bob (of recenter memory), who was his shadow in everything 
while he lived, and dwindled into less than a shadow afterwards 
— was a gentleman with a little stronger infusion of the latter 
ingredient ; that was all. It is amazing how a little of the 
more or less makes a difference in these things. When you 3° 
saw Bobby in the Duke's Servant,^ you said, what a pity such 
a pretty fellow was only a servant. When you saw Jack fig- 
uring in Captain Absolute, you thought you could trace his 

1 High Life Below Stairs. 



136 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 

promotion to some lady of quality who fancied the handsome 
fellow in his top-knot, and had bought him a commission. 
Therefore Jack in Dick Amlet was insuperable. 

Jack had two voices, — both plausible, hypocritical, and 
5 insinuating; but his secondary or supplemental voice still 
more decisively histrionic than his common one. It was 
reserved for the spectator; and the dramatis personce were 
supposed to know nothing at all about it. The lies of young 
Wilding, and the sentiments in Joseph Surface, were thus 

10 marked out in a sort of italics to the audience. This secret 
correspondence with the company before the curtain (which 
is the bane and death of tragedy) has an extremely happy 
effect in some kinds of comedy, in the more highly artificial 
comedy of Congreve or of Sheridan especially, where the abso- 

15 lute sense of reality (so indispensable to scenes of interest) is 
not required, or would rather interfere to diminish your pleasure. 
The fact is, you do not believe in such characters as Surface — 
the villain of artificial comedy — even while , you read or see 
them. If you did, they would shock and not divert you. When 

20 Ben, in Love for Love, returns from sea, the following exquisite 
dialogue occurs at his first meeting with his father — 

Sir Sampsojt. Thou hast been many a weary league, Ben, since I 
saw thee. 

Ben. Ey, ey, been ! Been far enough, an that be all. — Well, father, 
25 and how do all at home ? how does brother Dick, and brother Val ? 

Sir Sampson. Dick ! body o' me, Dick has been dead these two 
years. I writ you word when you were at Leghorn. 

Ben. Mess, that 's true ; Marry, I had forgot. Dick's dead, as you 
say — Well, and how? — I have a many questions to ask you — 

30 Here is an instance of insensibility which in real life would 
be revolting, or rather in real fife could not have co-existed 
with the warm-hearted temperament of the character. But 
when you read it in the spirit with which such playful selections 
and specious combinations rather than strict metaphrases of 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS I 3/ 

nature should be taken, or when you saw Bannister play it, 
it neither did, nor does, wound the moral sense at all. For 
what is Ben — the pleasant sailor which Bannister gives us — 
but a piece of satire — a creation of Congreve's fancy — a 
dreamy combination of all the accidents of a sailor's character 5 

— his contempt of money — his credulity to women — with 
that necessary estrangement from home which it is just within 
the verge of credibility to suppose might produce such an 
hallucination as is here described. We never think the worse 
of Ben for it, or feel it as a stain upon his character. But 10 
when an actor comes, and instead of the delightful phantom 

— the creature dear to half-belief — which Bannister exhibited 

— displays before our eyes a downright concretion of a Wap- 
ping sailor — a jolly warm-hearted Jack Tar — and nothing 
else — when instead of investing it with a delicious confused- 15 
ness of the head, and a veering undirected goodness of purpose 

— he gives to it a downright daylight understanding, and a 
full consciousness of its actions ; thrusting forward the sensi- 
bilities of the character with a pretence as if it stood upon 
nothing else, and was to be judged by them alone — we fee^ 20 
the discord of the thing ; the scene is disturbed ; a real man 
has got in among the dramatis personce, and puts them out. 
We want the sailor turned out. We feel that his true place is 
not behind the curtain but in the first or second gallery. 



XVIII. THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 

I LIKE to meet a sweep — understand me — not a grown 25 
sweeper — old chimney-sweepers are by no means attractive 
— but one of those tender novices, blooming through their 
first nigritude, the maternal washings not quite effaced from 
the cheek — such as come forth with the dawn, or somewhat 
earlier, with their little professional notes sounding like the 30 



138 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 

peep peep of a young sparrow ; or liker to the matin lark 
should I pronounce them, in their aerial ascents not seldom 
anticipating the sun-rise? 

I have a kindly yearning towards these dim specks — poor 
5 blots — innocent blacknesses — 

I reverence these young Africans of our own growth — these 
almost clergy imps, who sport their cloth without assumption ; 
and from their little pulpits (the tops of chimneys), in the 
nipping air of a December morning, preach a lesson of patience 

10 to mankind. 

When a child, what a mysterious pleasure it was to witness 
their operation ! to see a chit no bigger than one's self enter, 
one knew not by what process, into what seemed the fauces 
Averni — to pursue him in imagination, as he went sounding 

1 5 on through so many dark stifling caverns, horrid shades ! — to 
shudder with the idea that " now, surely, he must be lost for 
ever ! " — to revive at hearing his feeble shout of discovered 
daylight — and then (O fulness of delight) running out of 
doors, to come just in time to see the sable phenomenon 

20 emerge in safety, the brandished weapon of his art victorious 
like some flag waved over a conquered citadel ! I seem to 
remember having been told, that a bad sweep was once left in 
a stack with his brush, to indicate which way the wind blew. 
It was an awful spectacle certainly ; not much unlike the old 

25 stage direction in Macbeth, where the " Apparition of child 
crowned with a tree in his hand rises." 

Reader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry in thy 
early rambles, it is good to give him a penny. It is better to 
give him twopence. If it be starving weather, and to the 

30 proper troubles of his hard occupation, a pair of kibed heels 
(no unusual accompaniment) be superadded, the demand on 
thy humanity will surely rise to a tester. 

There is a composition, the groundwork of which I have 
understood to be the sweet wood yclept sassafras. This wood 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS I 39 

boiled down to a kind of tea, and tempered with an infusion 
of milk and sugar, hath to some tastes a delicacy beyond the 
China luxury. I know not how thy palate may relish it ; for 
myself, with every deference to the judicious Mr. Read, who 
hath time out of mind kept open a shop (the only one he 5 
avers in London) for the vending of this " wholesome and 
pleasant beverage," on the south side of Fleet Street, as thou 
approachest Bridge Street — the only Salopian house^ — I have 
never yet adventured to dip my own particular lip in a basin 
of his commended ingredients — a cautious premonition to the 10 
olfactories constantly whispering to me, that my stomach must 
infallibly, with all due courtesy, decline it. Yet I have seen 
palates, otherwise not uninstructed in dietetical elegances, sup 
it up with avidity. 

I know not by what particular conformation of the organ it 15 
happens, but I have always found that this composition is sur- 
prisingly gratifying to the palate of a young chimney-sweeper 
— whether the oily particles (sassafras is slightly oleaginous) 
do attenuate and soften the fuHginous concretions, which are 
sometimes found (in dissections) to adhere to the roof of the 20 
mouth in these unfledged practitioners; or whether Nature, 
sensible that she had mingled too much of bitter wood in the 
lot of these raw victims, caused to grow out of the earth her 
sassafras for a sweet' lenitive — but so it is, that no possible 
taste or odour to the senses of a young chimney-sweeper 25 
can convey a delicate excitement comparable to this mixture. 
Being penniless, they will yet hang their black heads over the 
ascending steam, to gratify one sense, if possible, seemingly no 
less pleased than those domestic animals — cats — when they 
purr over a new-found sprig of valerian. There is something 30 
more in these sympathies than philosophy can inculcate. 

Now albeit Mr. Read boasteth, not without reason, that his 
is the only Salopian house ; yet be it known to thee, reader — 
if thou art one who keepest what are called good hours, thou 



140 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 

art happily ignorant of the fact — he hath a race of industrious 
imitators, who from stalls, and under open sky, dispense the 
same savoury mess to humbler customers, at the dead time of 
the dawn, when (as extremes meet) the rake, reeling home 
5 from his midnight cups, and the hard-handed artisan leaving 
his bed to resume the premature labours of the day, jostle, 
not unfrequently to the manifest disconcerting of the former, 
for the honours of the pavement. It is the time when, in sum- 
mer, between the expired and the not yet relumined kitchen- 

10 fires, the kennels of our fair metropolis give forth their least 
satisfactory odours. The rake who wisheth to dissipate his o'er 
night vapours in more grateful coffee, curses the ungenial fume, 
as he passeth ; but the artisan stops to taste, and blesses the 
fragrant breakfast. 

1 5 This is Saloop — the precocious herb-woman's darling — the 
delight of the early gardener, who transports his smoking 
cabbages by break of day from Hammersmith to Covent Gar- 
den's famed piazzas — the delight, and, oh I fear, too often the 
envy, of the unpennied sweep. Him shouldest thou haply 

2o encounter, with his dim visage pendent over the grateful steam, 
regale him with a sumptuous, basin (it will cost thee but three 
halfpennies) and a slice of delicate bread and butter (an added 
halfpenny) so may thy culinary fires, eased of the o'ercharged 
secretions from thy worse-placed hospitalities, curl up a lighter 

2 5 volume to the welkin — so may the descending soot never taint 
thy costly well-ingredienced soups — nor the odious cry, quick- 
reaching from street to street, of the fired chitnney^ invite the 
rattling engines from ten adjacent parishes, to disturb for a 
casual scintillation thy peace and pocket ! 

30 I am by nature extremely susceptible of street affronts ; the 
jeers and taunts of the populace ; the low-bred triumph they 
display over the casual trip, or splashed stocking, of a gentle- 
man. Yet can I endure the jocularity of a young sweep with 
something more than forgiveness. — In the last winter but one, 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS I4I 

pacing along Cheapside with my accustomed precipitation when 
I walk westward, a treacherous slide brought me upon my back 
in an instant. I scrambled up with pain and shame enough 
— yet outwardly trying to face it down, as if nothing had hap- 
pened — when the roguish grin of one of these young wits 5 
encountered me. There he stood, pointing me out with his 
dusky finger to the mob, and to a poor woman (I suppose his 
mother) in particular, till the tears for the exquisiteness of the 
fun (so he thought it) worked themselves out at the corners of 
his poor red eyes, red from many a previous weeping, and soot- 10 
inflamed, yet twinkling through all with such a joy, snatched 

out of desolation, that Hogarth but Hogarth has got him 

already (how could he miss him?) in the March to Finchley, 

grinning at the pie-man there he stood, as he stands in 

the picture, irremovable, as if the jest was to last for ever — 15 
with such a maximum of glee, and minimum of mischief, in his 
mirth — for the grin of a genuine sweep hath absolutely no 
malice in it — that I could have been content, if the honour 
of a gentleman might endure it, to have remained his butt and 
his mockery till midnight. 20 

I am by theory obdurate to the seductiveness of what are 
called a fine set of teeth. Every pair of rosy lips (the ladies 
must pardon me) is a casket presumably holding such jewels ; 
but, methinks, they should take leave to " air " them as frugally 
as possible. The fine lady, or fine gentleman, who show me their 25 
teeth, show me bones. Yet must I confess, that from the mouth 
of a true sweep a display (even to ostentation) of those white 
and shining ossifications, strikes me as an agreeable anomaly in 
manners, and an allowable piece of foppery. It is, as when 



A sable cloud 
Turns forth her silver lining on the night. 

It is like some remnant of gentry not quite extinct ; a badge 
of better days ; a hint of nobility : — and, doubtless, under 



30 



142 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 

the obscuring darkness and double night of their forlorn dis- 
guisement, oftentimes lurketh good blood, and gentle condi- 
tions, derived from lost ancestry, and a lapsed pedigree. The 
premature apprenticements of these tender victims give but 
5 too much encouragement, I fear, to clandestine, and almost 
infantile abductions ; the seeds of civihty and true courtesy, so 
often discernible in these young grafts (not otherwise to be 
accounted for) plainly hint at some forced adoptions ; many 
noble Rachels mourning for their children, even in our days, 

10 countenance the fact ; the tales of fairy-spiriting may shadow 
a lamentable verity, and the recovery of the young Montagu be 
but a solitary instance of good fortune, out of many irreparable 
and hopeless dejiliations . 

In one of the state-beds at Arundel Castle, a few years since 

15 — under a ducal canopy — (that seat of the Howards is an 
object of curiosity to visitors, chiefly for its beds, in which the 
late Duke was especially a connoisseur) — encircled with cur- 
tains of delicatest crimson, with starry coronets inwoven — 
folded between a pair of sheets whiter and softer than the lap 

20 where Venus lulled Ascanius — was discovered by chance, after 
all methods of search had failed, at noonday, fast asleep, a 
lost chimney-sweeper. The little creature, having somehow 
confounded his passage among the intricacies of those lordly 
chimneys, by some unknown aperture had alighted upon this 

25 magnificent chamber; and, tired with his tedious explorations, 
was unable to resist the delicious invitement to repose, which 
he there saw exhibited ; so, creeping between the sheets very 
quietly, laid his black head upon the pillow, and slept like a 
young Howard. 

30 Such is the account given to the visitors at the Castle. — 
But I cannot help seeming to perceive a confirmation of what 
I have just hinted at in this story. A high instinct was at work 
in the case, or I am mistaken. Is it probable that a poor 
child of that description, with whatever weariness he might be 



i 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 1 43 

visited, would have ventured, under such a penalty as he would 
be taught to expect, to uncover the sheets of a Duke's bed, 
and deliberately to lay himself down between them, when the 
rug, or the carpet, presented an obvious couch, still far above 
his pretensions — is this probable, I would ask, if the great 5 
power of nature, which I contend for, had not been mani- 
fested within him, prompting to the adventure ? Doubtless this 
young nobleman (for such my mind misgives me that he must 
be) was allured by some memory, not amounting to full con- 
sciousness, of his condition in infancy, when he was used to 10 
be lapt by his mother, or his nurse, in just such sheets as he 
there found, into which he was now but creeping back as into 
his proper incunabula^ and resting-place. By no other theory, 
than by this sentiment of a pre-existent state (as I may call 
it), can I explain a deed so venturous, and, indeed, upon any 15 
other system, so indecorous, in this tender, but unseasonable, 
sleeper. 

My pleasant friend Jem White was so impressed with a 
belief of metamorphoses like this frequently taking place, that 
in some sort to reverse the wrongs of fortune in these poor 20 
changelings, he instituted an annual feast of chimney-sweepers, 
at which it was his pleasure to officiate as host and waiter. 
It was a solemn supper held in Smithfield, upon the yearly 
return of the fair of St. Bartholomew. Cards were issued a 
week before to the master-sweeps in and about the metropo- 25 
lis, confining the invitation to their younger fry. Now and 
then an elderly stripling would get in among us, and be good- 
naturedly winked at ; but our main body were infantry. One 
unfortunate wight, indeed, who, relying upon his dusky suit, 
had intruded himself into our party, but by tokens was provi- 30 
dentially discovered in time to be no chimney-sweeper (all is 
not soot which looks so), was quoited out of the presence with 
universal indignation, as not having on the wedding garment ; 
but in general the greatest harmony prevailed. The place 



144 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 

chosen was a convenient spot among the pens, at the north 
side of the fair, not so far distant as to be impervious to the 
agreeable hubbub of that vanity ; but remote enough not to 
be obvious to the interruption of every gaping spectator in it. 
5 The guests assembled about seven. In those little temporary 
parlours three tables were spread with napery, not so fine as 
substantial, and at every board a comely hostess presided with 
her pan of hissing sausages. The nostrils of the young rogues 
dilated at the savour. James White, as head waiter, had charge 

lo of the first table ; and myself, with our trusty companion Bigod, 
ordinarily ministered to the other two. There was clamour- 
ing and jostling, you may be sure, who should get at the first 
table — for Rochester in his maddest days could not have done 
the humours of the scene with more spirit than my friend. 

15 After some general expression of thanks for the honour the 
company had done him, his inaugural ceremony was to clasp 
the greasy waist of old dame Ursula (the fattest of the three), 
that stood frying and fretting, half-blessing, half-cursing " the 
gentleman," and imprint upon her chaste lips a tender salute, 

20 whereat the universal host would set up a shout that tore the 
concave, while hundreds of grinning teeth startled the night 
with their brightness. O it was a pleasure to see the sable 
younkers lick in the unctuous meat, with his more unctuous 
sayings — how he would fit the tit-bits to the puny mouths, 

25 reserving the lengthier links for the seniors — how he would 
intercept a morsel even in the jaws of some young desperado, 
declaring it " must to the pan again to be browned, for it was 
not fit for a gentleman's eating" — how he would recommend 
this sHce of white bread, or that piece of kissing-crust, to a 

30 tender juvenile, advising them all to have a care of cracking 
their teeth, which were their best patrimony, — how genteelly 
he would deal about the small ale, as if it were wine, naming 
the brewer, and protesting, if it were not good, he should lose 
their custom ; with a special recommendation to wipe the lip 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG I45 

before drinking. Then we had our toasts — "The King," — 
the "Cloth," — which, whether they understood or not, was 
equally diverting and flattering ; — and for a crowning sen- 
timent, which never failed, " May the Brush supersede the 
Laurel." All these, and fifty other fancies, which were rather 5 
felt than comprehended by his guests, would he utter, standing 
upon tables, and prefacing every sentiment with a " Gentle- 
men, give me leave to propose so and so," which was a pro- 
digious comfort to those young orphans ; every now and then 
stuffing into his mouth (for it did not do to be squeamish on 10 
these occasions) indiscriminate pieces of those reeking sausages, 
which pleased them mightily, and was the savouriest part, you 
may believe, of the entertainment. 

Golden lads and lasses must, 

As chimney-sweepers, come to dust. 15 

James White is extinct, and with him these suppers have 
long ceased. He carried away with him half the fun of the 
world when he died — of my world at least. His old clients 
look for him among the pens ; and, missing him, reproach the 
altered feast of St. Bartholomew, and the glory of Smithfield 20 
departed for ever. 



XIX. A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. 
was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first 
seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting 
it from the Hving animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this 25 
day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great 
Confucius in the second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, 
where he designates a kind of golden age by the term Cho- 
fang, Hterally the Cook's holiday. The manuscript goes on to 



146 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 

say, that the art of roasting, or rather broihng (which I take 
to be the elder brother) was accidentally discovered in the 
manner following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti, having gone out 
into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast 
5 for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, 
a great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as 
younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into 
a bundle of straw, which kindling quickly, spread the conflagra- 
tion over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to 

10 ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian make- 
shift of a building, you may think it), what was of much more 
importance, a fine Utter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than 
nine in number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed a 
luxury all over the East from the remotest periods that we read 

15 of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think, 
not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his father 
and he could easily build up again with a few dry branches, 
and the labour of an hour or two, at any time, as for the loss 
of the pigs. While he was thinking what he should say to his 

20 father, and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of 
one of those untimely sufferers, an odour assailed his nostrils, 
unlike any scent which he had before experienced. What 
could it proceed from? — not from the burnt cottage — he 
had smelt that smell before — indeed this was by no means 

25 the first accident of the kind which had occurred through the 
negligence of this unlucky young firebrand. Much less did it 
resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A pre- 
monitory moistening at the same time overflowed his nether 
lip. He knew not what to think. He next stooped down to 

30 feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his 
fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his booby fashion 
to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had 
come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life 
(in the world's hfe indeed, for before him noanan had known 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG I47 

it) he tasted — crackling! Again he felt and fumbled at the 
pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he licked his 
fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into 
his slow understanding, that it was the pig that smelt so, and 
the pig that tasted so delicious ; and, surrendering himself up 5 
to the new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls 
of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming 
it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire entered 
amid the smoking rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and 
finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young 10 
rogue's shoulders, as thick as hail-stones, which Bo-bo heeded 
not any more than if they had been flies. The tickling pleas- 
ure, which he experienced in his lower regions, had rendered 
him quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in those 
remote quarters. His father might lay on, but he could not 15 
beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, 
becoming a little more sensible of his situation, something like 
the following dialogue ensued. 

"You graceless whelp, what have you got there devouring? 
Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses 20 
with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you, but you must 
be eating fire, and I know not what — what have you got there, 
I say? " 

" O father, the pig, the pig, do come and taste how nice the 
burnt pig eats." 25 

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his son, 
and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a son that 
should eat burnt pig. 

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since morn- 
ing, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, 30^ 
thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still 
shouting out, " Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste, — 
O Lord," — with such-like barbarous ejaculations, cramming 
all the while as if he would choke. 



148 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 

Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the abomina- 
ble thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to death 
for an unnatural young monster, when the crackling scorching 
his fingers, as it had done his son's, and applying the same 
5 remedy to them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavour, which, 
make what sour mouths he would for a pretence, proved not 
altogether displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the manu- 
script here is a little tedious) both father and son fairly sat 
down to the mess, and never left off till they had despatched 

10 all that remained of the litter. 

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, 
for the neighbours would certainly have stoned them for a 
couple of abominable wretches, who could think of improv- 
ing upon the good meat which God had sent them. Never- 

15 theless, strange stories got about. It was observed that Ho-ti's 
cottage was burnt down now more frequently than ever. 
Nothing but fires from this time forward. Some would break 
out in broad day, others in the night-time. As often as 
the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of Ho-ti to be in a 

20 blaze ; and Ho-ti himself, which was the more remarkable, 
instead of chastising his son, seemed to grow more indulgent 
to him than ever. At length they were watched, the terrible 
mystery discovered, and father and son summoned to take 
their trial at Pekin, then an inconsiderable assize town. Evi- 

25 dence was given, the obnoxious food itself produced in court, 
and verdict about to be pronounced, when the foreman of 
the jury begged that some of the burnt pig, of which the 
culprits stood accused, might be handed into the box. He 
handled it, and they all handled it, and burning their fingers, 

30 as Bo-bo and his father had done before them, and nature 
prompting to each of them the same remedy, against the face 
of all the facts, and the clearest charge which judge had ever 
given, — to the surprise of the whole court, townsfolk, stran- 
gers, reporters, and all present — without leaving the box, or 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG I49 

any manner of consultation whatever, they brought in a simul- 
taneous verdict of Not Guilty. 

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the manifest 
iniquity of the decision ; and, when the court was dismissed, 
went privily, and bought up all the pigs that could be had for 5 
love or money. In a few days his Lordship's town house was 
observed to be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there 
was nothing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel and 
pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. The insur- 
ance offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter 10 
and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very science 
of architecture would in no long time be lost to the world. 
Thus this custom of firing houses continued, till in process of 
time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, who 
made a discovery, that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any 15 
other animal, might be cooked (bu?'nt, as they called it) without 
the necessity of consuming a whole house to dress it. Then 
first began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the 
string, or spit, came in a century or two later, I forget in 
whose dynasty. By such slow degrees, concludes the manu- 20 
script, do the most useful, and seemingly the most obvious 
arts, make their way among mankind. 

Without placing too implicit faith in the account above given, 
it must be agreed, that if a worthy pretext for so dangerous an 
experiment as setting houses on fire (especially in these days) 25 
could be assigned in favour of any culinary object, that pretext 
and excuse might be found in roast pig. 

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis, I will 
maintain it to be the most delicate — princeps obsoniorum. 

I speak not of your grown porkers — things between pig and 30 
pork — those hobbydehoys — but a young and tender suckling 
— under a moon old — guiltless as yet of the sty — with no 
original speck of the amor immunditicE, the hereditary failing 
of the first parent, yet manifest — his voice as yet not broken. 



150 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 

but something between a childish treble, and a grumble — the 
mild forerunner, ox prceludmm, of a grunt. 

He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our ancestors 
ate them seethed, or boiled — but what a sacrifice of the exte- 
5 rior tegument ! 

There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that of 

the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted, crackling, as 

it is well called — the very teeth are invited to their share of 

the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle 

10 resistance — with the adhesive oleaginous — O call it not fat 

— but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it — the tender 
blossoming of fat — fat cropped in the bud — taken in the shoot 

— in the first innocence — the cream and quintessence of the 
child-pig's yet pure food — the lean, no lean, but a kind of 

1 5 animal manna, — or, rather, fat and lean (if it must be so) 
so blended and running into each other, that both together 
make but one ambrosian result, or common substance. 

Behold him, while he is "doing" — it seemeth rather a 
refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is so passive 

20 to. How equably he twirleth round the string ! — Now he is 
just done. To see the extreme sensibility of that tender age, 
he hath wept out his pretty eyes — radiant jellies — shooting 
stars — 

See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he lieth ! — 

25 wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up to the grossness 
and indocility which too often accompany maturer swinehood ? 
Ten to one he would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obsti- 
nate, disagreeable animal — wallowing in all manner of filthy 
conversation — from these sins he is happily snatched away — 

30 Ere sin could blight, or sorrow fade. 

Death came with timely care — 

his memory is odoriferous — no clown curseth, while his stom- 
ach half rejecteth, the rank bacon— -no coalheaver bolteth hipa 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 151 

in reeking sausages — he hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful 
stomach of the judicious epicure — and for such a tomb might 
be content to die. 

He is the best of sapors. Pine-apple is great. She is indeed 
almost too transcendent — a delight, if not sinful, yet so like S 
to sinning, that really a tender-conscienced person would do 
well to pause — too ravishing for mortal taste, she woundeth 
and excoriateth the lips that approach her — like lovers' kisses, 
she biteth — she is a pleasure bordering on pain from the fierce- 
ness and insanity of her relish — but she stoppeth at the palate 10 
— she meddleth not with the appetite — and the coarsest 
hunger might barter her consistently for a mutton chop. 

Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less provocative of the 
appetite, than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of the cen- 
sorious palate. The strong man may batten on him, and the 15 
weakling refuseth not his mild juices. 

Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of virtues 
and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to be unravelled 
without hazard, he is — good throughout. No part of him is 
better or worse than another. He helpeth, as far as his little 20 
means extend, all around. He is the least envious of banquets. 
He is all neighbours' fare. 

I am one of those, who freely and ungrudgingly impart a 
share of the good things of this life which fall to their lot (few 
as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest I take as great 25 
an interest in my friend's pleasures, his relishes, and proper 
satisfactions, as in mine own. " Presents," I often say, "endear 
Absents." Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door 
chickens (those "tame villatic fowl"), capons, plovers, brawn, 
barrels of oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive them. I 30 
love to taste them, as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. 
But a stop must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear, 
"give everything." I make my stand upon pig. Methinks 
it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good flavours, to 



152 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 

extradomiciliate, or send out of the house, sHghtingly (under 
pretext of friendship, or I know not what), a blessing so par- 
ticularly adapted, predestined, I may say, to my individual 
palate. — It argues an insensibility. 
5 I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at school. 
My good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end of a 
holiday without stuffing a sweetmeat, or some nice thing into my 
pocket, had dismissed me one evening with a smoking plum- 
cake, fresh from the oven. In my way to school (it was over 

10 London Bridge) a grey-headed old beggar saluted me (I have 
no doubt at this time of day that he was a counterfeit). I 
had no pence to console him with, and in the vanity of self- 
denial, and the very coxcombry of charity, schoolboy-like, I 
made him a present of — the whole cake ! I walked on a 

15 little, buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, with a sweet 
soothing of self-satisfaction ; but before I had got to the end 
of the bridge, my better feelings returned, and I burst into 
tears, thinking how ungrateful I had been to my good aunt, 
to go and give her good gift away to a stranger, that I had 

20 never seen before, and who might be a bad man for aught I 
knew ; and then I thought of the pleasure my aunt would be 
taking in thinking that I — I myself, and not another — would 
eat her nice cake — and what should I say to her the next 
time I saw her — how naughty I was to part with her pretty 

25 present — and the odour of that spicy cake came back upon 
my recollection, and the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken 
in seeing her make it, and her joy when she sent it to the oven, 
and how disappointed she would feel that I had never had a 
bit of it in my mouth at last — and I blamed my impertinent 

30 spirit of alms-giving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness, 
and above all I wished never to see the face again of that 
insidious, good-for-nothing, old grey impostor. 

Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing these 
tender victims, We read of pigs whipt to death with something 



ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN 1 53 

of a shock, as we hear of any other obsolete custom. The age 
of discipline is gone by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a 
philosophical light merely) what effect this process might have 
towards intenerating and dulcifying a substance, naturally so 
mild and dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It looks like s 
refining a violet. Yet we should be cautious, while we con- 
demn the inhumanity, how we censure the wisdom of the 
practice. It might impart a gusto — 

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young 
students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with lo 
much learning and pleasantry on both sides, " Whether, sup- 
posing that the flavour of a pig who obtained his death by 
whipping (^per Jlagellationem extremani) superadded a pleas- 
ure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible 
suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified in 15 
using that method of putting the animal to death?" I forget 
the decision. 

His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few bread 
crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a dash of 
mild sage. But, banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the 20 
whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to your pal- 
ate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations 
of the rank and guilty garlic ; you cannot poison them, or 
make them stronger than they are — but consider, he is a 
weakling — a flower. 25 



XX. ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN 

Not many nights ago I had come home from seeing this 
extraordinary performer in Cockletop ; and when I retired to 
my pillow, his whimsical image still stuck by me, in a manner 
as to threaten sleep. In vain I tried to divest myself of it, by 
conjuring up the most opposite associations. I resolved to be 30 



154 ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN 

serious. I raised up the gravest topics of life ; private misery, 
public calamity. All would not do. 

• There the antic sate 



Mocking our state — 

5 his queer visnomy — his bewildering costume — all the strange 
things which he had raked together — his serpentine rod, 
swagging about in his pocket — Cleopatra's tear, and the rest 
of his relics — O'Keefe's wild farce, and his wilder commen- 
tary — till the passion of laughter, like grief in excess, relieved 

lo itself by its own weight, inviting the sleep which in the first 
instance it had driven away. 

But I was not to escape so easily. No sooner did I fall into 
slumbers, than the same image, only more perplexing, assailed 
me in the shape of dreams. Not one Munden, but five hun- 

15 dred, were dancing before me, like the faces which, whether 
you will or no, come when you have been taking opium 
— all the strange combinations, which this strangest of all 
strange mortals ever shot his proper countenance into, from 
the day he came commissioned to dry up the tears of the 

20 town for the loss of the now almost forgotten Edwin. O for 
the power of the pencil to have fixed them when I awoke ! 
A season or two since there was exhibited a Hogarth gallery. 
I do not see why there should not be a Munden gallery. 
In richness and variety the latter would not fall far short of 

25 the former. 

There is one face of Farley, one face of Knight, one (but 
what a one it is !) of Listen ; but Munden has none that you 
can properly pin down, and call his. When you think he has 
exhausted his battery of looks, in unaccountable warfare with 

30 your gravity, suddenly he sprouts out an entirely new set of 
features, like Hydra. He is not one, but legion. Not so much 
a comedian, as a company. If his name could be multipHed 
like his countenance, it might fill a play-bill. He, and he alone, 



ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN 155 

literally makes faces : applied to any other person, the phrase 
is a mere figure, denoting certain modifications of the human 
countenance. Out of some invisible wardrobe he dips for faces, 
as his friend Suett used for wigs, and fetches them out as 
easily. I should not be surprised to see him some day put 5 
out the head of a river-horse ; or come forth a pewit, or lap- 
wing, some feathered metamorphosis. 

I have seen this gifted actor in Sir Christopher Curry — in 
Old Dornton — diffuse a glow of sentiment which has made 
the pulse of a crowded theatre beat like that of one man ; when 10 
he has come in aid of the pulpit, doing good to the moral 
heart of a people. I have seen some faint approaches to 
this sort of excellence in other players. But in the grand 
grotesque of farce, Munden stands out as single and unac- 
companied as Hogarth. Hogarth, strange to tell, had no 15 
followers. The school of Munden began, and must end with 
himself. 

Can any man wo72der, like him? can any man see ghosts, 
like him? ox fight with his own shadow — " sessa " — as he 
does in that strangely-neglected thing, the Cobbler of Preston 20 
— where his alternations from the Cobbler to the Magnifico, 
and from the Magnifico to the Cobbler, keep the brain of the 
spectator in as wild a ferment, as if some Arabian Night were 
being acted before him. Who like him can throw, or ever 
attempted to throw, a preternatural interest over the common- 25 
est daily-life objects? A table, or a joint stool, in his concep- 
tion, rises into a dignity equivalent to Cassiopeia's chair. It 
is invested with constellatory importance. You could not speak 
of it with more deference, if it were mounted into the firma- 
ment. A beggar in the hands of Michael Angelo, says Fuseli, 30 
rose the Patriarch of Poverty. So the gusto of Munden anti- 
quates and ennobles what it touches. His pots and his ladles 
are as grand and primal as the seething-pots and hooks seen 
in old prophetic vision. A tub of butter, contemplated by 



156 MUNDEN'S FAREWELL 

him, amounts to a Platonic idea. He understands a leg cf 
mutton in its quiddity. He stands wondering, amid the com- 
monplace materials of life, like primeval man with the sun and 
stars about him. 



XXL MUNDEN'S FAREWELL 

5 The regular playgoers ought to put on mourning, for the 
king of broad comedy is dead to the drama ! — Alas ! — 
Munden is no more ! — give sorrow vent. He may yet walk 
the town, pace the pavement in a seeming existence — eat, 
drink, and nod to his friends in all the affectation of hfe — 

10 but Munden, — the Munden ! — Munden, who with the bunch 
of countenances, the bouquet of faces, is gone for ever from 
the lamps, and, as far as comedy is concerned, is as dead as 
Garrick ! When an actor retires (we will put the suicide as 
mildly as possible) how many worthy persons perish with him ! 

15 — With Munden, — Sir Peter Teazle must experience a shock 
— Sir Robert Bramble gives up the ghost — Crack ceases to 
breathe. Without Munden what becomes of Dozey ? Where 
shall we seek Jemmy Jumps ? Nipperkin and a thousand of 
such admirable fooleries fall to nothing, and the departure 

20 therefore of such an actor as Munden is a dramatic calamity. 
On the night that this inestimable humourist took farewell of 
the public, he also took his benefit : — a benefit in which the 
public assuredly did not participate. The play was Coleman's 
Poor Gentleman, with Tom Dibdin's farce oi Fast Te7i 0' Clock. 

25 Reader, we all know Munden in Sir Robert Bramble, and Old 
Tobacco complexioned Dozey ; — we all have seen the old 
hearty baronet in his light sky-blue coat and genteel cocked 
hat ; and we have all seen the weather-beaten old pensioner, 
Dear Old Dozey, tacking about the stage in that intense blue 

30 sea livery — drunk as heart could wish, and right valorous in 



MUNDEN'S FAREWELL 157 

memory. On this night Munden seemed like the Gladiator 
" to rally life's whole energies to die," and as we were pres- 
ent at this great display of his powers, and as this will be 
the last opportunity that will ever be afforded us to speak of 
this admirable performer, we shall "consecrate," as Old John 5 
Buncle says, "a paragraph to him." 

The house was full, — fidl I — pshaw! that's an empty 
word ! — The house was stuffed, crammed with people — 
crammed from the swing door of the pit to the back seat in 
the banished one shilling. A quart of audience may be said lo 
(vintner-like, may it be said) to have been squeezed into 
a pint of theatre. Every hearty play-going Londoner, who 
remembered Munden years agone, mustered up his courage 
and his money for this benefit — and middle-aged people 
were therefore by no means scarce. The comedy chosen for 15 
the occasion, is one that travels a long way without a guard ; 
it is not until the third or fourth act, we think, that Sir Robert 
Bramble appears on the stage. When he entered, his recep- 
tion was earnest, — noisy, — outrageous, — waving of hats and 
handkerchiefs, — deafening shouts, — clamorous beating of 20 
sticks, — all the various ways in which the heart is accus- 
tomed to manifest its joy were had recourse to on this 
occasion. Mrs. Bamfield worked away with a sixpenny fan 
till she scudded only under bare poles. Mr. Whittington 
wore out the ferule of a new nine-and-sixpenny umbrella. 25 
Gratitude did great damage on the joyful occasion. 

The old performer, the veteran, as he appropriately called 
himself in the farewell speech, was plainly overcome ; he 
pressed his hands together, he planted one solidly on his 
breast, he bowed, he sidled, he cried 1 When the noise 30 
subsided (which it invariably does at last) the comedy pro- 
ceeded, and Munden gave an admirable picture of the rich, 
eccentric, charitable old bachelor baronet, who goes about 
with Humphrey Dobbin at his heels, and philanthropy in his 



158 MUNDEN'S FAREWELL 

heart. How crustily and yet how kindly he takes Humphrey's 
contradictions ! How readily he puts himself into an attitude 
for arguing ! How tenderly he gives a loose to his heart on 
the apprehension of Frederick's duel. In truth he played 
5 Sir Robert in his very ripest manner, and it was impossible 
not to feel in the very midst of pleasure regret that Munden 
should then be before us for the last time. 

In the farce he became richer and richer ; Old Dozey is 
a plant from Greenwich. The bronzed face — and neck to 

I o match — the long curtain of a coat — the straggling white 
hair — the propensity, the determined attachment to grog, 
are all from Greenwich. Munden, as Dozey, seems never to 
have been out of action, sun, and drink. He looks (alas he 
looked) fireproof. His face and throat were dried hke a 

15 raisin, and his legs walked under the rum-and-water with all 
the indecision which that inestimable beverage usually inspires. 
It is truly tacking, not walking. He steers at a table, and the 
tide of grog now and then bears him off the point. On this 
night, he seemed to us to be doomed to fall in action, and 

20 we therefore looked at him, as some of the Vidorfs crew are 
said to have gazed upon Nelson, with a consciousness that his 
ardour and his uniform were worn for the last time. In the 
scene where Dozey describes a sea fight, the actor never was 
greater, and he seemed the personification of an old seventy- 

25 four ! His coat hung like a flag at his poop ! His phiz was 
not a whit less highly coloured than one of those lustrous vis- 
ages which generally superintend the head of a ship ! There 
was something cumbrous, indecisive, and awful in his veerings ! 
Once afloat, it appeared impossible for him to come to his 

30 moorings ; once at anchor, it did not seem an easy thing to 
get him under weigh ! 

The time, however, came for the fall of the curtain, and for 
the fall of Munden ! The farce of the night was finished. The 
farce of the long forty years' play was over ! He stepped 



MUNDEN'S FAREWELL 159 

forward, not as Dozey, but as Miinden, and we heard him 
address us from the stage for the last time. He trusted, 
unwisely we think, to a written paper. He read of " heart-felt 
recollections," and " indelible impressions." He stammered, 
and he pressed his heart, — and put on his spectacles, — and 5 
blundered his written gratitudes, — and wiped his eyes, and 
bowed — and stood, — and at last staggered away for ever ! 
The plan of his farewell was bad, but the long life of excellence 
which really made his farewell pathetic, overcame all defects, 
and the people and Joe Munden parted like lovers ! Well ! 10 
Farewell to the Rich Old Heart ! May thy retirement be as 
full of repose, as thy public life was full of excellence ! We 
must all have our farewell benefit in our turn. 



LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA 



XXII. DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND 

READING 

To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the 
forced product of another man's brain. Now I think a man of qual- 
ity and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his 
own. — Lord Foppington, in the Relapse. 

An ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much struck 
with this bright sally of his Lordship, that he has left off read- 
ing altogether, to the great improvement of his originality. At 
the hazard of losing some credit on this head, I must confess 
5 that I dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my time to other 
people's thoughts. I dream away my life in others' specula- 
tions. I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I 
am not walking, I am reading ; I cannot sit and think. Books 
think for me. 
10 I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for 
me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can read anything which 
I call a book. There are things in that shape which I cannot 
allow for such. 

In this catalogue of hooks which are no hooks — hihlia a-hihlia 
15 — I reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket Books (the 
Literary excepted), Draught Boards bound and lettered at the 
back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacks, Statutes at Large ; the 
works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, 
and, generally, all those volumes which " no gentleman's library 1 
20 should be without :" the Histories of Flavins Josephus (that 

160 I 

. ill 



THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING l6l 

learned Jew), and Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these ex- 
ceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless my stars for a 
taste so catholic, so unexcluding. 

I confess that it moves my spleen to see these things in books' 
clothing perched upon shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true 5 
shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legiti- 
mate occupants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of 
a volume, and hope it some kind-hearted play-book, then, 
opening what " seem its leaves," to come bolt upon a wither- 
ing Population Essay. To expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and 10 
find — Adam Smith. To view a well-arranged assortment of 
blockheaded Encyclopaedias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas) 
set out in an array of Russia, or Morocco, when a tithe of that 
good leather would comfortably re-clothe my shivering folios ; 
would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund 15 
LuUy to look like himself again in the world. I never see these 
impostors, but I long to strip them, to warm my ragged veterans 
in their spoils. 

To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desideratum of 
a volume. Magnificence comes after. This, when it can be 20 
afforded, is not to be lavished upon all kinds of books indis- 
criminately. I would not dress a set of Magazines, for instance, 
in full suit. The deshabille, or half-binding (with Russia backs 
ever) is our costume. A Shakespeare, or a Milton (unless the 
first editions), it were mere foppery to trick out in gay apparel. 25 
The possession of them confers no distinction. The exterior 
of them (the things themselves being so common), strange to 
say, raises no sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property in 
the owner. Thomson's Seasons, again, looks best (I maintain 
it) a little torn, and dog's-eared. How beautiful to a genuine 30 
lover of reading are the suUied leaves, and worn-out appearance, 
nay, the very odour (beyond Russia), if we would not forget 
kind feelings in fastidiousness, of an old " Circulating Library " 
Tom Jones, or Vicar of Wakefield ! How they speak of the 



l62 THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING 

thousand thumbs, that have turned over their pages with deHght ! 
— of the lone sempstress whom they may have cheered (milhner 
or harder- working mantua-maker) after her long day's needle- 
toil, running far into midnight, when she has snatched an hour, 
5 ill spared from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some Lethean 
cup, in spelling out their enchanting contents ! Who would 
have them a whit less soiled? What better condition could 
we desire to see them in? 

In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands 

10 from binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and all that class of 
perpetually self-reproductive volumes — Great Nature's Stereo- 
types — we see them individually perish with less regret, because 
we know the copies of them to be " eterne." But where a 
book is at once both good and rare — where the individual is 

15 almost the species, and when //^^/ perishes. 

We know not where is that Promethean torch 
That can its light relumine — 

such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of Newcastle, 
by his Duchess — no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently 

20 durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel. 

Not only rare volumes of this description, which seem hope- 
less ever to be reprinted ; but old editions of writers, such as 
Sir Philip Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Milton in his prose-works. 
Fuller — of whom we /lave reprints, yet the books themselves, 

25 though they go about, and are talked of here and there, we 
know, have not endenizened themselves (nor possibly ever 
will) in the national heart, so as to become stock books — it 
is good to possess these in durable and costly covers. I do not 
care for a First Folio of Shakespeare. You cannot make a,Jfef 

30 book of an author whom everybody reads. I rather prefer the 
common editions of Rowe and Tonson, without notes, and with 
J>/aUs, which, being so execrably bad, serve as maps, or modest 
remembrancers, to the text; and without pretending to any 



THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING 163 

supposable emulation with it, are so much better than the 
Shakespeare gallery e?igravmgs, which did. I have a com- 
munity of feeling with my countrymen about his Plays, and 
I like those editions of him best, which have been oftenest 
tumbled about and handled. — On the contrary, I cannot read 5 
Beaumont and Fletcher but in Folio. The Octavo editions 
are painful to look at. I have no sympathy with them. If 
they were as much read as the current editions of the other 
poet, I should prefer them in that shape to the older one. I 
do not know a more heartless sight than the reprint of the 10 
Anatomy of Melancholy. What need was there of unearthing 
the bones of that fantastic old great man, to expose them in a 
winding-sheet of the newest fashion to modern censure ? what 
hapless stationer could dream of Burton ever becoming popular ? 
— The wretched Malone could not do worse, when he bribed 15 
the sexton of Stratford church to let him whitewash the painted 
effigy of old Shakespeare, which stood there, in rude but lively 
fashion depicted, to the very colour of the cheek, the eye, the 
eyebrow, hair, the very dress he used to wear — the only authen- 
tic testimony we had, however imperfect, of these curious parts 20 
and parcels of him. They covered him over with a coat of 

white paint. By , if I had been a justice of peace for 

Warwickshire, I would have clapped both commentator and 
sexton fast in the stocks, for a pair of meddling sacrilegious 
varlets. 25 

I think I see them at their work — these sapient trouble- 
tombs. 

Shall I be thought fantastical, if I confess, that the names 
of some of our poets sound sweeter, and have a finer relish to 
the ear — to mine, at least — than that of Milton or of Shake- 30 
speare? It may be, that the latter are more staled and rung 
upon in common discourse. The sweetest names, and which 
carry a perfume in the mention, are. Kit Marlowe, Drayton, 
Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cowley. 



164 THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING 

Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In 
the five or six hupatient minutes, before the dinner is quite 
ready, who would think of taking up the Faerie Queene for a 
stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes' sermons? 
5 Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played 
before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which, 
who Hstens, had need bring docile thoughts, and purged ears. 

Winter evenings — the world shut out — with less of cere- 
mony the gentle Shakespeare enters. At such a season, the 
10 Tempest, or his own Winter's Tale — 

These two poets you cannot avoid reading aloud — to your- 
self, or (as it chances) to some single person Hstening. More 
than one — and it degenerates into an audience. 

Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents, are for 
15 the eye to glide over only. It will not do to read them out. 
I could never listen to even the better kind of modern novels 
without extreme irksomeness. 

A newspaper, read out, is intolerable. In some of the Bank 

offices it is the custom (to save so much individual time) for 

20 one of the clerks — who is the best scholar — to commence 

upon the Times, or the Chronicle, and recite its entire contents 

aloud pro bo?io publico. With every advantage of lungs and 

elocution, the effect is singularly vapid. In barbers' shops and 

pubUc-houses a fellow will get up, and spell out a paragraph, 

25 which he communicates as some discovery. Another fellow 

with his selection. So the entire journal transpires at length 

by piece-meal. Seldom-readers are slow readers, and, without 

this expedient, no one in the company would probably ever 

travel through the contents of a whole paper. 

30 Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one 

down without a feeling of disappointment. 

What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at Nando's, 
keeps the paper ! I am sick of hearing the waiter bawling out 
incessantly, " The Chronicle is in hand, sir." 



THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING 1 65 

As in these little diumals I generally skip the Foreign 
News, the Debates and the PoUtics, I find the Morning 
Herald by far the most entertaining of them. It is an agree- 
able miscellany rather than a newspaper. 

Coming in to an inn at night — having ordered your supper 5 
— what can be more delightful than to find lying in the 
window-seat, left there time out of mind by the carelessness 
of some former guest — two or three numbers of the old Town 
and Country Magazine, with its amusing tete-a-tete pictures — 

"The Royal Lover and Lady G ;" "The Melting Pla- 10 

tonic and the Old Beau," — and such-like antiquated scandal? 
Would you exchange it — at that time, and in that place — for 
a better book? 

Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not regret it so 
much for the weightier kinds of reading — the Paradise Lost, 15 
or Comus, he could have read to him — but he missed the 
pleasure of skimming over with his own eye a magazine, or a 
light pamphlet. 

I should not care to be caught in the serious avenues of 
some cathedral alone, and reading Candide. 20 

I do not remember a more whimsical surprise than having 
been once detected — by a familiar damsel — reclined at my 
ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill (her Cythera), reading 
— Pamela. There was nothing in the book to make a man 
seriously ashamed at the exposure ; but as she seated herself 25 
down by me, and seemed determined to read in company, I 
could have wished it had been — any other book. We read on 
very sociably for a few pages ; and, not finding the author much 
to her taste, she got up, and — went away. Gentle casuist, I 
leave it to thee to conjecture, whether the blush (for there was 30 
one between us) was the property of the nymph or the swain 
in this dilemma. From me you shall never get the secret. 

I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. I cannot 
settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian minister, who was 



l66 THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING 

generally to be seen upon Snow Hill (as yet Skinner's Street 
was not), between the hours of ten and eleven in the morning, 
studying a volume of Lardner. I own this to have been a 
strain of abstraction beyond my reach. I used to admire how 
5 he sidled along, keeping clear of secular contacts. An illit- 
erate encounter with a porter's knot, or a bread basket, would 
have quickly put to flight all the theology I am master of, and 
have left me worse than indifferent to the five points. 

I was once amused — there is a pleasure in affecti7ig affecta- 

lo tion — at the indignation of a crowd that was jostling in with 
me at the pit-door of Covent Garden Theatre, to have a sight 
of Master Betty — then at once in his dawn and his meridian 
— in Hamlet. I had been invited, quite unexpectedly, to 
join a party, whom I met near the door of the play-house, 

15 and I happened to have in my hand a large octavo of Johnson 
and Steevens's Shakespeare, which, the time not admitting of 
my carrying it home, of course went with me to the theatre. 
Just in the very heat and pressure of the doors opening — the 
rush, as they term it — I deliberately held the volume over 

20 my head, open at the scene in which the young Roscius had 
been most cried up, and quietly read by the lamp-light. 
The clamour became universal. " The affectation of the fel- 
low," cried one. " Look at that gentleman reading, papa," 
squeaked a young lady, who, in her admiration of the novelty, 

25 almost forgot her fears. I read on. " He ought to have his 
book knocked out of his hand," exclaimed a pursy cit, whose 
arms were too fast pinioned to his side to suffer him to exe- 
cute his kind intention. Still I read on — and, till the time 
came to pay my money, kept as unmoved as Saint Anthony 

30 at his holy offices, with the satyrs, apes, and hobgoblins mop- 
ping and making mouths at him, in the picture, while the 
good man sits as undisturbed at the sight as if he were the 
sole tenant of the desert. — The individual rabble (I recog- 
nized more than one of their ugly faces) had damned a slight 



i 



THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING 16/ 

piece of mine a few nights before, and I was determined the 
culprits should not a second time put me out of countenance. 
There is a class of street-readers whom I can never contem- 
plate without affection — the poor gentry, who, not having 
wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little learning at the 5 
open stalls — the owner, with his hard eye, casting envious 
looks at them all the while, and thinking when they will have 
done. Venturing tenderly, page after page, expecting every 
moment when he shall interpose his interdict, and yet unable 
to deny themselves the gratification, they " snatch a fearful 10 

joy." Martin B , in this way, by daily fragments, got 

through two volumes of Clarissa, when the stall-keeper damped 
his laudable ambition, by asking him (it was in his younger 
days) whether he meant to purchase the work. M. declares, 
that under no circumstances of his life did he ever peruse a 15 
book with half the satisfaction which he took in those uneasy 
snatches. A quaint poetess of our day has moralized upon 
this subject in two very touching but homely stanzas. 

I saw a boy with eager eye 

Open a book upon a stall, 20 

And read as he 'd devour it all ; 
Which when the stall-man did espy. 
Soon to the boy I heard him call, 
' You, sir, you never buy a book, 

Therefore in one you shall not look.' 25 

The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a sigh 
He wish'd he never had been taught to read. 
Then of the old churl's books he should have had no 
need. 

Of sufferings the poor have many. 

Which never can the rich annoy: 30 

I soon perceived another boy, 

Who look'd as if he 'd not had any 

Food, for that day at least — enjoy 



1 68 OLD CHINA 

The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder. 

This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder, 

Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny, 

Beholding choice of dainty-dressed meat : 

No wonder if he wish he ne'er had learn'd to eat. 



XXIII. OLD CHINA 

I HAVE an almost feminine partiality for old china. When 
I go to see any great house, I inquire for the china-closet, 
and next for the picture-gallery. I cannot defend the order 
of preference, but by saying, that we have all some taste or 

10 other, of too ancient a date to admit of our remembering 
distinctly that it was an acquired one. I can call to mind 
the first play and the first exhibition, that I was taken to ; but I 
am not conscious of a time when china jars and saucers were 
introduced into my imagination. 

1 5 I had no repugnance then — why should I now have ? — to 

those little lawless, azure-tinctured grotesques, that under the 

notion of men and women, float about, uncircumscribed by any 

element, in that world before perspective — a china tea-cup. 

I like to see my old friends — whom distance cannot dimin- 

2o ish — figuring up in the air (so they appear to our optics), 
yet on ferra firma still — for so we must in courtesy interpret 
that speck of deeper blue, which the decorous artist, to prevent 
absurdity, has made to spring up beneath their sandals. 

I love the men with women's faces, and the women, if 

25 possible, with still more womanish expressions. 

Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to a 
lady from a salver — two miles off. See how distance seems 
to set off respect ! And here the same lady, or another — 
for likeness is identity on tea-cups — is stepping into a little 

30 fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this calm garden 
river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle of 



OLD CHINA 169 

incidence (as angles go in our world) must infallibly land her 
in the midst of a flowery mead — a furlong oif on the other 
side of the same strange stream ! 

Farther on — if far or near can be predicated of their world 
— see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays. 5 

Here — a cow and rabbit couchant, and co-extensive — so 
objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere of fine Cathay. 

I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over our 
Hyson (which we are old-fashioned enough to drink unmixed 
still of an afternoon), some of these speciosa miracula upon a 10 
set of extraordinary old blue china (a recent purchase) which 
we were now for the first time using ; and could not help 
remarking, how favourable circumstances had been to us of 
late years, that we could afford to please the eye sometimes 
with trifles of this sort — when a passing sentiment seemed 1 5 
to over-shade the brows of my companion. I am quick at 
detecting these summer clouds in Bridget. 

" I wish the good old times would come again," she said, 
"when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean, that I 
want to be poor; but there was a middle state;" — so she 20 
was pleased to ramble on, — "in which I am sure we were a 
great deal happier. A purchase is but a purchase, now that 
you have money enough and to spare. Formerly it used to 
be a triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury (and, O ! 
how much ado I had to get you to consent in those times !) 25 
we were used to have a debate two or three days before, and 
to weigh the for and against, and think what we might spare 
it out of, and what saving we could hit upon, that should be 
an equivalent. A thing was worth buying then, when we 
felt the money that we paid for it. 30 

" Do you remember the brown suit, which you made to 
hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon you, it 
grew so threadbare, and all because of that folio Beaumont 
and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night from 



I/O OLD CHINA 

Barker's in Covent Garden? Do you remember how we 
eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the 
purchase, and had not come to a determination till it was 
near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from 
5 Islington, fearing you should be too late — and when the old 
bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the 
twinkling taper (for he was setting bedwards) lighted out the 
relic from his dusty treasures — and when you lugged it home, 
wishing it were twice as cumbersome — and when you pre- 

lo sented it to me — and when we were exploring the perfect- 
ness of it {collating you called it) — and while I was repairing 
some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience 
would not suffer to be left till daybreak — was there no pleas- 
ure in being a poor man? or can those neat black clothes 

1 5 which you wear now, and are so careful to keep brushed, since 
we have become rich and finical, give you half the honest 
vanity, with which you flaunted it about in that overworn suit 
— your old corbeau — for four or five weeks longer than you 
should have done, to pacify your conscience for the mighty 

20 sum of fifteen — or sixteen shillings was it? — a great affair 
we thought it then — which you had lavished on the old folio. 
Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I 
do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old pur- 
chases now. 

25 "When you came home with twenty apologies for laying 
out a less number of shillings upon that print after Leonardo, 
which we christened the ' Lady Blanche ' ; when you looked 
at the purchase, and thought of the money — and thought 
of the money, and looked again at the picture — was there 

30 no pleasure in being a poor man? Now, you have nothing 
to do but to walk into Colnaghi's, and buy a wilderness of 
Leonardos. Yet do you? 

"Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield, 
and Potter's Bar, and Waltham, when we had a holiday — 



OLD CHINA 171 

holidays, and all other fun, are gone, now we are rich — and 
the Httle hand-basket in which I used to deposit our day's 
fare of savoury cold lamb and salad — and how you would 
pry about at noontide for some decent house, where we 
might go in, and produce our store — only paying for the 5 
ale that you must call for — and speculate upon the looks 
of the landlady, and whether she was likely to allow us a 
table-cloth — and wish for such another honest hostess, as 
Izaak Walton has described many a one on the pleasant 
banks of the Lea, when he went a-fishing — and sometimes 10 
they would prove obliging enough, and sometimes they would 
look grudgingly upon us — but we had cheerful looks still for 
one another, and would eat our plain food savourily, scarcely 
grudging Piscator his Trout Hall? Now, when we go out 
a day's pleasuring, which is seldom moreover, we ride part 15 
of the way — and go into a fine inn, and order the best of 
dinners, never debating the expense — which, after all, never 
has half the relish of those chance country snaps, when 
we were at the mercy of uncertain usage, and a precarious 
welcome. 20 

"You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in 
the pit. Do you remember where it was we used to sit, when 
we saw the Battle of Hexham, and the Surrender of Calais, 
and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the Children in the Wood — 
when we squeezed out our shillings a-piece to sit three or four 25 
times in a season in the one-shilling gallery — where you felt 
all the time that you ought not to have brought me — and more 
strongly I felt obligation to you for having brought me — and 
the pleasure was the better for a Httle shame — and when the 
curtain drew up, what cared we for our place in the house, or 30 
what mattered it where we were sitting, when our thoughts 
were with Rosalind in Arden, or with Viola at the Court of 
Illyria? You used to say, that the gallery was the best place 
of all for enjoying a play socially — that the relish of such 



172 OLD CHINA 

exhibitions must be in proportion to the infrequency of going 

— that the company we met there, not being in general readers 
of plays, were obliged to attend the more, and did attend, to 
what was going on, on the stage — because a word lost would 

5 have been a chasm, which it was impossible for them to fill 
up. With such reflections we consoled our pride then — and 
I appeal to you, whether, as a woman, I met generally with less 
attention and accommodation, than I have done since in more 
expensive situations in the house ? The getting in indeed, and 
10 the crowding up those inconvenient staircases, was bad enough, 

— but there was still a law of civility to women recognized to 
quite as great an extent as we ever found in the other passages 

— and how a little difficulty overcome heightened the snug 
seat, and the play afterwards ! Now we can only pay our 

15 money, and walk in. You cannot see, you say, in the galleries 
now, I am sure we saw, and heard too, well enough then — 
but sight, and all, I think, is gone with our poverty. 

" There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before they 
became quite common — in the first dish of peas, while they 

20 were yet dear — to have them for a nice supper, a treat. 
What treat can we have now? If we were to treat ourselves 
now — that is, to have dainties a little above our means, it 
would be selfish and wicked. It is the very little more that 
we allow ourselves beyond what the actual poor can get at, 

25 that makes what I call a treat — when two people living 
together, as we have done, now and then indulge themselves 
in a cheap luxury, which both like ; while each apologizes, 
and is willing to take both halves of the blame to his single 
share. I see no harm in people making much of themselves 

30 in that sense of the word. It may give them a hint how to 
make much of others. But now — what I mean by the word 

— we never do make much of ourselves. None but the poor 
can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of all, but persons 
as we were, just above poverty. 



OLD CHINA 173 

" I know what you were going to say, that it is mighty 
pleasant at the end of the year to make all meet — and much 
ado we used to have every Thirty-first Night of December to 
account for our exceedings — many a long face did you make 
over your puzzled accounts, and in contriving to make it out 5 
how we had spent so much — or that we had not spent so 
much — or that it was impossible we should spend so much 
next year — and still we found our slender capital decreasing 
— but then, betwixt ways, and projects, and compromises of 
one sort or another, and talk of curtailing this charge, and 10 
doing without that for the future — and the hope that youth 
brings, and laughing spirits (in which you were never poor 
till now), we pocketed up our loss, and in conclusion, with 
' lusty brimmers ' (as you used to quote it out of hearty cheerful 
Mr. Cotton^ as you called him), we used to welcome in the 15 
' coming guest.' Now we have no reckoning at all at the end 
of the old year — no flattering promises about the new year 
doing better for us." 

Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occasions, that 
when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful how I inter- 20 
rupt it. I could not help, however, smiling at the phantom 
of wealth which her dear imagination had conjured up out of 
a clear income of poor — hundred pounds a year. "It is 
true we were happier when we were poorer, but we were also 
younger, my cousin. I am afraid we must put up with the 25 
excess, for if we were to shake the superflux into the sea, we 
should not much mend ourselves. That we had much to 
struggle with, as we grew up together, we have reason to be 
most thankful. It strengthened, and knit our compact closer. 
We could never have been what we have been to each other, 30 
if we had always had the sufficiency which you now com- 
plain of. The resisting power — those natural dilations of 
the youthful spirit, which circumstances cannot straiten — 
with us are long since passed away. Competence to age is 



174 POOR RELATIONS 

supplementary youth ; a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear 
the best that is to be had. We must ride where we formerly 
walked : live better and lie softer — and shall be wise to do 
so — than we had means to do in those good old days you 
5 speak of. Yet could those days return — could you and I 
once more walk our thirty miles a-day — could Bannister and 
Mrs. Bland again be young, and you and I be young to see 
them — could the good old one-shilling gallery days return 
— they are dreams, my cousin, now — but could you and I 

lo at this moment, instead of this quiet argument, by our well- 
carpeted fireside, sitting on this luxurious sofa — be once 
more struggling up those inconvenient staircases, pushed 
about, and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest rabble of 
poor gallery scramblers — could I once more hear those 

1 5 anxious shrieks of yours — and the delicious Thank God, we 
are safe, which always followed when the topmost stair, con- 
quered, let in the first light of the whole cheerful theatre 
down beneath us — I know not the fathom line that ever 
touched a descent so deep as I would be willing to bury more 

20 wealth in than Croesus had, or the great Jew R is sup- 
posed to have, to purchase it. And now do just look at that 
merry little Chinese waiter holding an umbrella, big enough 
for a bed-tester, over the head of that pretty insipid half- 
Madonna-ish chit of a lady in that very blue summer-house." 



XXIV. POOR RELATIONS 

25 A POOR relation — is the most irrelevant thing in nature, 
— a piece of impertinent correspondency, — an odious 
approximation, — a haunting conscience, — a preposterous 
shadow, lengthening in the noontide of your prosperity, — 
an unwelcome remembrancer, — a perpetually recurring mor- 

30 tification, — a drain on your purse, — a more intolerable dun 



POOR RELATIONS 1/5 

upon your pride, — a drawback upon success, — a rebuke 
to your rising, — a stain in your blood, — a blot on your 
'scutcheon, — a rent in your garment, — a death's head at your 
banquet, — Agathocles' pot, — a Mordecai in your gate, — a 
Lazarus at your door, — a lion in your path, — a frog in your 5 
chamber, — a fly in your ointment, — a mote in your eye, — 
a triumph to your enemy, — an apology to your friends, — the 
one thing not needful, — the hail in harvest, — the ounce of 
sour in a pound of sweet. 

He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you "That 10 

is Mr. ." A rap, between familiarity and respect; that 

demands, and, at the same time, seems to despair of, enter- 
tainment. He entereth smiling, and — embarrassed. He 
holdeth out his hand to you to shake, and draweth it back 
again. He casually looketh in about dinner-time — when the 15 
table is full. He offereth to go away, seeing you have com- 
pany — but is induced to stay. He filleth a chair, and your 
visitor's two children are accommodated at a side table. He 
never cometh upon open days, when your wife says with 

some complacency, " My dear, perhaps Mr. will drop in 20 

to-day." He remembereth birthdays — and professeth he is 
fortunate to have stumbled upon one. He declareth against 
fish, the turbot being small — yet suffereth himself to be im- 
portuned into a slice, against his first resolution. He stick- 
eth by the port — yet will be prevailed upon to empty the 25 
remainder glass of claret, if a stranger press it upon him. He 
is a puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being too obse- 
quious, or not civil enough, to him. The guests think " they 
have seen him before." Every one speculateth upon his 
condition ; and the most part take him to be — a tide-waiter. 30 
He calleth you by your Christian name, to imply that his 
other is the same with your own. He is too familiar by half, 
yet you wish he had less diffidence. With half the familiarity 
he might pass for a casual dependent ; with more boldness he 



176 POOR RELATIONS 

would be in no danger, of being taken for what he is. He is 
too humble for a friend, yet taketh on him more state than 
befits a client. He is a worse guest than a country tenant, 
inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent — yet 'tis odds, from his 
5 garb and demeanour, that your guests take him for one. He 
is asked to make one at the whist table ; refuses on the score 
of poverty, and — resents being left out. When the company 
break up, he proffereth to go for a coach — and lets the 
servant go. He recollects your grandfather; and will thrust 

10 in some mean, and quite unimportant anecdote of — the 
family. He knew it when it was not quite so flourishing as 
"he is blest in seeing it now." He reviveth past situations, 
to institute what he calleth — favourable comparisons. With 
a reflecting sort of congratulation, he will inquire the price 

1 5 of your furniture ; and insults you with a special commenda- 
tion of your window-curtains. He is of opinion that the urn 
is the more elegant shape, but, after all, there was something 
more comfortable about the old tea-kettle — which you must 
remember. He dare say you must find a great convenience 

20 in having a carriage of your own, and appealeth to your lady 
if it is not so. Inquireth if you have had your arms done on 
vellum yet ; and did not know till lately, that such-and-such 
had been the crest of the family. His memory is unseason- 
able ; his compliments perverse ; his talk a trouble ; his stay 

25 pertinacious; and when he goeth away, you dismiss his chair 
into a corner, as precipitately as possible, and feel fairly rid 
of two nuisances. 

There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is — a female 
Poor Relation. You may do something with the other ; you 

30 may pass him off tolerably well ; but your indigent she-rela- 
tive is hopeless. " He is an old humourist," you may say, 
" and affects to go threadbare. His circumstances are better 
than folks would take them to be. You are fond of having a 
Character at your table, and truly he is one." But in the 



POOR RELATIONS 1/7 

indications of female poverty there can be no disguise. No 
woman dresses below herself from caprice. The truth must 

out without shuffling. "She is plainly related to the L s; 

or what does she at their house ? " She is, in all probabihty, 
your wife's cousin. Nine times out of ten, at least, this is the 5 
case. Her garb is something between a gentlewoman and a 
beggar, yet the former evidently predominates. She is most 
provokingly humble, and ostentatiously sensible to her inferi- 
ority. He may require to be repressed sometimes — ali- 
quajido sufflaminaiidiis erat — but there is no raising her. lo 
You send her soup at dinner, and she begs to be helped — 

after the gentlemen. Mr. requests the honour of taking 

wine with her ; she hesitates between Port and Madeira, and 
chooses the former — because he does. She calls the servant 
Sir; and insists on not troubling him to hold her plate. The 15 
housekeeper patronizes her. The children's governess takes 
upon her to correct her, when she has mistaken the piano for 
a harpsichord. 

Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable instance of 
the disadvantages, to which this chimerical notion of affinity 20 
co7istitutifig a dai^ii to acquaintance, may subject the spirit of 
a gentleman. A little foolish blood is all that is betwixt him 
and a lady with a great estate. His stars are perpetually 
crossed by the malignant maternity of an old woman, who 
persists in calling him " her son Dick." But she has where- 25 
withal in the end to recompense his indignities, and float him 
again upon the brilliant surface, under which it had been her 
seeming business and pleasure all along to sink him. All men, 
besides, are not of Dick's temperament. I knew an Amlet in 
real life, who, wanting Dick's buoyancy, sank indeed. Poor 30 

W was of my own standing at Christ's, a fine classic, and 

a youth of promise. If he had a blemish, it was too much 
pride ; but its quality was inoffensive ; it was not of that sort 
which hardens the heart, and serves to keep inferiors at a 



1/8 POOR RELATIONS 

distance ; it only sought to ward off derogation from itself. 
It was the principle of self-respect carried as far as it could 
go, without infringing upon that respect which he would have 
every one else equally maintain for himself. He would have 
5 you to think alike with him on this topic. Many a quarrel 
have I had with him, when we were rather older boys, and 
our tallness made us more obnoxious to observation in the 
blue clothes, because I would not thread the alleys and bHnd 
ways of the town with him to elude notice, when we have 

10 been out together on a holiday in the streets of this sneering 

and prying metropolis. W went, sore with these notions, 

to Oxford, where the dignity and sweetness of a scholar's life, 
meeting with the alloy of a humble introduction, wrought in 
him a passionate devotion to the place, with a profound aver- 

15 sion from the society. The servitor's gown (worse than his 
school array) clung to him with Nessian venom. He thought 
himself ridiculous in a garb, under which Latimer must have 
walked erect ; and in which Hooker, in his young days, possi- 
bly flaunted in a vein of no discommendable vanity. In the 

20 depth of college shades, or in his lonely chamber, the poor 
student shrunk from observation. He found shelter among 
books, which insult not ; and studies, that ask no questions of 
a youth's finances. He was lord of his library, and seldom 
cared for looking out beyond his domains. The healing 

25 influence of studious pursuits was upon him, to soothe and 
to abstract. He was almost a healthy man ; when the way- 
wardness of his fate broke out against him with a second and 
worse malignity. The father of W had hitherto exer- 
cised the humble profession of house-painter at N , near 

30 Oxford. A supposed interest with some of the heads of 
colleges had now induced him to take up his abode in that 
city, with the hope of being employed upon some public 
works which were talked of. From that moment I read in 
the countenance of the young man, the determination which 



POOR RELATIONS 1/9 

at length tore him from academical pursuits for ever. To 
a person unacquainted with our Universities, the distance 
between the gownsmen and the townsmen, as they are called 

— the trading part of the latter especially — is carried to an 
excess that would appear harsh and incredible. The tempera- 5 

ment of W 's father was diametrically the reverse of his 

own. Old W was a little, busy, cringing tradesman, who, 

with his son upon his arm, would stand bowing and scraping, 
cap in hand, to anything that wore the semblance of a gown 

— insensible to the winks and opener remonstrances of the lo 
young man, to whose chamber-fellow, or equal in standing, 
perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and gratuitously ducking. 

Such a state of things could not last. W must change 

the air of Oxford or be suffocated. He chose the former; and 
let the sturdy moralist, who strains the point of the filial duties 15 
as high as they can bear, censure the dereliction ; he cannot 
estimate the struggle. I stood with W , the last afternoon 

I ever saw him, under the eaves of his paternal dwelling. It 
was in the fine lane leading from the High Street to the back 

of * * * * college, where W kept his rooms. He seemed 20 

thoughtful, and more reconciled. I ventured to rally him — 
finding him in a better mood — upon a representation of the 
Artist Evangelist, which the old man, whose affairs were 
beginning to flourish, had caused to be set up in a splendid 
sort of frame, over his really handsome shop, either as a token 25 

of prosperity, or badge of gratitude to his saint. W 

looked up at the Luke, and, like Satan, "knew his mounted sign 

— and fled." A letter on his father's table the next morn- 
ing, announced that he had accepted a commission in a regi- 
ment about to embark for Portugal, He was among the first 3a 
who perished before the walls of St. Sebastian. 

I do not know how, upon a subject which I began with 
treating half seriously, I should have fallen upon a recital so 
eminently painful ; but this theme of poor relationship is 



l8o POOR RELATIONS 

replete with so much matter for tragic, as well as comic 
associations, that it is difficult to keep the account distinct 
without blending. The earliest impressions which I received 
on this matter, are certainly not attended with anything 
5 painful, or very humiliating, in the recalling. At my father's 
table (no very splendid one) was to be found, every Saturday, 
the mysterious figure of an aged gentleman clothed in neat 
black, of a sad yet comely appearance. His deportment was 
of the essence of gravity ; his words few or none ; and I was 

10 not to make a noise in his presence. I had little inclination 
to have done so — for my cue was to admire in silence. 
A particular elbow-chair was appropriated to him, which was 
in no case to be violated. A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, 
which appeared on no other occasion, distinguished the days 

1 5 of his coming. I used to think him a prodigiously rich man. 
All I could make out of him was, that he and my father had 
been schoolfellows a world ago at Lincoln, and that he came 
from the Mint. The Mint I knew to be a place where all 
the money was coined — and I thought he was the owner of 

20 all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower twined themselves 
about his presence. He seemed above human infirmities 
and passions. A sort of melancholy grandeur invested him. 
From some inexphcable ■ doom I fancied him obliged to go 
about in an eternal suit of mourning ; a captive — a stately 

25 being, let out of the Tower on Saturdays. Often have I 
wondered at the temerity of my father, who, in spite of an 
habitual general respect which we all in common manifested 
towards him, would venture now and then to stand up against 
him in some argument, touching their youthful days. The 

30 houses of the ancient city of Lincoln are divided (as most 
of my readers know) between the dwellers on the hill, and 
in the valley. This marked distinction formed an obvious 
division between the boys who lived above (however brought 
together in a common school) and the boys whose paternal 



POOR RELATIONS l8l 

residence was on the plain ; a sufficient cause of hostility in 
the code of these young Grotiuses. My father had been a 
leading Mountaineer; and would still maintain the general 
superiority, in skill and hardihood, of the Above Boys (his 
own faction) over the Below Boys (so were they called), of 5 
which party his contemporary had been a chieftain. Many 
and hjot were the skirmishes on this topic — the only one 
upon which the old gentleman was ever brought out — and 
bad blood bred ; even sometimes almost to the recommence- 
ment (so I expected) of actual hostilities. But my father, 10 
who scorned to insist upon advantages, generally contrived to 
turn the conversation upon some adroit by-commendation of 
the old Minster; in the general preference of which, before 
all other cathedrals in the island, the dweller on the hill, and 
the plain-born, could meet on a conciliating level, and lay 15 
down their less important differences. Once only I saw the 
old gentleman really ruffled, and I remember with anguish 
the thought that came over me : " Perhaps he will never 
come here again." He had been pressed to take another 
plate of the viand, which I have already mentioned as the 20 
indispensable concomitant of his visits. He had refused, 
with a resistance amounting to rigour — when my aunt, an old 
Lincolnian, but who had something of this, in common with 
my cousin Bridget, that she would sometimes press civiHty 
out of season — uttered the following memorable appHcation 25 
— ■ " Do take another slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get 
pudding every day." — The old gentleman said nothing at 
the time — but he took occasion in the course of the evening, 
when some argument had intervened between them, to utter 
with an emphasis which chilled the company, and which chills 30 
me now as I write it — "Woman, you are superannuated." 
John Billet did not survive long after the digesting of this 
affront ; but he survived long enough to assure me that peace 
was actually restored ! and, if I remember aright, another 



1 82 THE OLD MARGATE HOY 

pudding was discreetly substituted in the place of that which 
had occasioned the offence. He died at the Mint (Anno 1781) 
where he had long held, what he accounted, a comfortable 
independence ; and with five pounds, fourteen shilKngs, and 
5 a penny, which were found in his escritoire after his decease, 
left the world, blessing God that he had enough to bury him, 
and that he had never been obliged to any man for a sixpence. 
This was — a Poor Relation. 



XXV. THE 01.D MARGATE HOY 

I AM fond of passing my vacations (I believe I have said so 

10 before) at one or other of the Universities. Next to these my 
choice would fix me at some woody spot, such as the neighbour- 
hood of Henley affords in abundance, upon the banks of my 
beloved Thames. But somehow or other my cousin contrives 
to wheedle me once in three or four seasons to a watering-place. 

15 Old attachments cling to her in spite of experience. We have 
been dull at Worthing one summer, duller at Brighton another, 
dullest at Eastbourne a third, and are at this moment doing 
dreary penance at — Hastings ! — and all because we were 
happy many years ago for a brief week at — Margate. That 

20 was our first sea-side experiment, and many circumstances 
combined to make it the most agreeable holiday of my life. 
We had neither of us seen the sea, and we had never been 
from home so long together in company. 

Can I forget thee, thou old Margate Hoy, with thy weather- 

25 beaten sunburnt captain, and his rough accommodations — 
ill exchanged for the foppery and fresh-water niceness of 
the modern steam-packet? To the winds and waves thou 
committedst thy goodly freightage, and didst ask no aid of 
magic fumes, and spells, and boihng cauldrons. With the gales 

30 of heaven thou wentest swimmingly ; or, when it was their 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY 1 83 

pleasure, stoodest still with sailor-like patience. Thy course 
was natural, not forced, as in a hotbed ; nor didst thou go 
poisoning the breath of ocean with sulphureous smoke — 
a great sea-chimera, chimneying and furnacing the deep ; or 
liker to that fire-god parching up Scamander. 5 

Can I forget thy honest, yet slender crew, with their coy 
reluctant responses (yet to the suppression of anything like 
contempt) to the raw questions, which we of the great city 
would be ever and anon putting to them, as to the uses of 
this or that strange naval implement? 'Specially can I for- 10 
get thee, thou happy medium, thou shade of refuge between 
us and them, conciliating interpreter of their skill to our 
simplicity, comfortable ambassador between sea and land ! — 
whose sailor-trousers did not more convincingly assure thee 
to be an adopted denizen of the former, than thy white cap, 15 
and whiter apron over them, with thy neat-fingered practice 
in thy culinary vocation, bespoke thee to have been of inland 
nurture heretofore — a master cook of Eastcheap? How bus- 
ily didst thou ply thy multifarious occupation, cook, mariner, 
attendant, chamberlain ; here, there, like another Ariel, flam- 20 
ing at once about all parts of the deck, yet with kindlier min- 
istrations — not to assist the tempest, but, as if touched with 
a kindred sense of our infirmities, to soothe the qualms which 
that untried motion might haply raise in our crude land-fancies. 
And when the o'er-washing billows drove us below deck (for it 25 
was far gone in October, and we had stiff and blowing weather) 
how did thy officious ministerings, still catering for our com- 
fort, with cards, and cordials, and thy more cordial conversa- 
tion, alleviate the closeness and the confinement of thy else 
(truth to say) not very savoury, nor very inviting, Httle cabin ! 30 

With these additaments to boot, we had on board a fellow- 
passenger, whose discourse in verity might have beguiled a 
longer voyage than we meditated, and have made mirth and 
wonder abound as far as the Azores. He was a dark, Spanish 



184 THE OLD MARGATE HOY 

complexioned young man, remarkably handsome, with an 
officer-hke assurance, and an insuppressible volubiHty of asser- 
tion. He was, in fact, the greatest Har I had met with then, 
or since. He was none of your hesitating, half story-tellers 
5 (a most painful description of mortals) who go on sounding 
your belief, and only giving you as much as they see you can 
swallow at a time — the nibbling pickpockets of your patience 
— but one who committed downright, daylight depredations 
upon his neighbour's faith. He did not stand shivering upon 

10 the brink, but was a hearty thorough-paced liar, and plunged 
at once into the depths of your credulity. I partly beheve, 
he made pretty sure of his company. Not many rich, not 
many wise, or learned, composed at that time the common 
stowage of a Margate packet. We were, I am afraid, a set of 

15 as unseasoned Londoners (let our enemies give it a worse name) 
as Aldermanbury, or Watling Street, at that time of day could 
have supplied. There might be an exception or two among 
us, but I scorn to make any invidious distinctions among such 
a jolly, companionable ship's company, as those were whom 

20 I sailed with. Something too must be conceded to the Genius 
Loci. Had the confident fellow told us half the legends on 
land, which he favoured us with on the other element, I flatter 
myself the good sense of most of us would have revolted. But 
we were in a new world, with everything unfamiliar about 

25 us, and the time and place disposed us to the reception of any 
prodigious marvel whatsoever. Time has obliterated from my 
memory much of his wild fablings ; and the rest would appear 
but dull, as written, and to be read on shore. He had been 
Aide-de-camp (among other rare accidents and fortunes) to a 

30 Persian prince, and at one blow had stricken off the head of 
the King of Carimania on horseback. He, of course, married 
the Prince's daughter. I forget what unlucky turn in the poli- 
tics of that court, combining with the loss of his consort, was 
the reason of his quitting Persia ; but with the rapidity of a 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY 1 85 

magician he transported himself, along with his hearers, back 
to England, where we still found him in the confidence of great 
ladies. There was some story of a Princess — Elizabeth, if I 
remember — having intrusted to his care an extraordinary cas- 
ket of jewels, upon some extraordinary occasion — but as I am 5 
not certain of the name or circumstance at this distance of 
time, I must leave it to the Royal daughters of England to 
settle the honour among themselves in private. I cannot call 
to mind half his pleasant wonders ; but I perfectly remember, 
that in the course of his travels he had seen a phoenix ; and he 10 
obligingly undeceived us of the vulgar error, that there is but 
one of that species at a time, assuring us that they were not 
uncommon in some parts of Upper Egypt. Hitherto he had 
found, the most implicit listeners. His dreaming fancies had 
transported us beyond the " ignorant present." But when (still 15 
hardying more and more in his triumphs over our simplicity) he 
went on to affirm that he had actually sailed through the legs 
of the Colossus at Rhodes, it really became necessary to make 
a stand. And here I must do justice to the good sense and 
intrepidity of one of our party, a youth, that had hitherto been 20 
one of his most deferential auditors, who, from his recent read- 
ing, made bold to assure the gentleman, that there must be 
some mistake, as " the Colossus in question had been destroyed 
long since : " to whose opinion, delivered with all modesty, our 
hero was obliging enough to concede thus much, that " the figure 25 
was indeed a little damaged." This was the only opposition 
he met with, and it did not at all seem to stagger him, for he 
proceeded with his fables, which the same youth appeared to 
swallow with still more complacency than ever, — confirmed, 
as it were, by the extreme candour of that concession. With 30 
these prodigies he wheedled us on till we came in sight of the 
Reculvers, which one of our own company (having been the 
voyage before) immediately recognizing, and pointing out to 
us, was considered by us as no ordinary seaman. 



l86 THE OLD MARGATE HOY 

All this time sat upon the edge of the deck quite a different 
character. It was a lad, apparently very poor, very infirm, and 
very patient. His eye was ever on the sea, with a smile : and, 
if he caught now and then some snatches of these wild legends, 
5 it was by accident, and they seemed not to concern him. The 
waves to him whispered more pleasant stories. He was as one, 
being with us, but not of us. He heard the bell of dinner ring 
without stirring ; and when some of us pulled out our private 
stores — our cold meat and our salads — he produced none, 

10 and seemed to want none. Only a solitary biscuit he had laid 
in ; provision for the one or two days and nights, to which these 
vessels then were oftentimes obliged to prolong their voyage. 
Upon a nearer acquaintance with him, which he seemed neither 
to court nor decline, we learned that he was going to Margate, 

15 with the hope of being admitted into the Infirmary there for 
sea-bathing. His disease was a scrofula, which appeared to 
have eaten all over him. He expressed great hopes of a cure ; 
and when we asked him, whether he had any friends where he 
was going, he replied, " he had no friends." 

20 These pleasant, and some mournful passages, with the first 
sight of the sea, co-operating with youth, and a sense of holi- 
days, and out-of-door adventure, to me that had been pent up 
in populous cities for many months before, — have left upon my 
mind the fragrance as of summer days gone by, bequeathing 

25 nothing but their remembrance for cold and wintry hours to 
chew upon. 

Will it be thought a digression (it may spare some unwel- 
come comparisons), if I endeavour to account for the dissatis- 
faction which I have heard so many persons confess to have 

30 felt (as I did myself feel in part on this occasion), at the sight 
of the sea for the first ti^ne ? I think the reason usually given 
— referring to the incapacity of actual objects for satisfying 
our preconceptions of them — scarcely goes deep enough into 
the question. Let the same person see a lion, an elephant, a 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY 1 8/ 

mountain, for the first time in his Hfe, and he shall perhaps 
feel himself a little mortified. The things do not fill up that 
space, which the idea of them seemed to take up in his mind. 
But they have still a correspondency to his first notion, and in 
time grow up to it, so as to produce a very similar impression : 5 
enlarging themselves (if I may say so) upon familiarity. But 
the sea remains a disappointment. — Is it not, that in the latter 
we had expected to behold (absurdly, I grant, but, I am afraid, 
by the law of imagination unavoidably) not a definite object, 
as those wild beasts, or that mountain compassable by the eye, 10 
but all the sea at once, the commensurate antagonist of the . 
EARTH ? I do not say we tell ourselves so much, but the crav- 
ing of the mind is to be satisfied with nothing less. I will 
suppose the case of a young person of fifteen (as I then was) 
knowing nothing of the sea, but from description. He comes 1 5 
to it for the first time — all that he has been reading of it all 
his life, and that the most enthusiastic part of life, — all he has 
gathered from narratives of wandering seamen ; what he has 
gained from true voyages, and what he cherishes as credulously 
from romance and poetry ; crowding their images, and exact- 20 
ing strange tributes from expectation. — He thinks of the great 
deep, and of those who go down unto it ; of its thousand isles, 
and of the vast continents it washes ; of its receiving the mighty 
Plata, or Orellana, into its bosom, without disturbance, or sense 
of augmentation ; of Biscay swells, and the mariner 25 

For many a day, and many a dreadful night, 
Incessant labouring round the stormy Cape ; 

of fatal rocks, and the " still- vexed Bermoothes ; " of great 
whirlpools, and the water-spout ; of sunken ships, and sumless 
treasures swallowed up in the unrestoring depths ; of fishes and 30 
quaint monsters, to which all that is terrible on earth — 

Be but as bugs to frighten babes withal, 
Compared with the creatures in the sea's entral ; 



1 88 THE OLD MARGATE HOY 

of naked savages, and Juan Fernandez ; of pearls, and shells ; of 
coral beds, and of enchanted isles ; of mermaids' grots — 

I do not assert that in sober earnest he expects to be shown 
all these wonders at once, but he is under the tyranny of a 
5 mighty faculty, which haunts him with confused hints and 
shadows of all these ; and when the actual object opens first 
upon him, seen (in tame weather too most likely) from our 
unromantic coasts — a speck, a slip of sea- water, as it shows 
to him — what can it prove but a very unsatisfying and even 

10 diminutive entertainment? Or if he has come to it from the 
mouth of a river, was it much more than the river widening ? 
and, even out of sight of land, what had he but a flat watery 
horizon about him, nothing comparable to the vast o'er-cur- 
taining sky, his familiar object, seen daily without dread or 

15 amazement? — Who, in similar circumstances, has not been 
tempted to exclaim with Charoba, in the poem of Gebir, — 

Is this the mighty ocean? — is this allf 

I love town, or country ; but this detestable Cinque Port is 
neither. I hate these scrubbed shoots, thrusting out their 

20 starved foliage from between the horrid fissures of dusty innu- 
tritions rocks ; which the amateur calls " verdure to the edge 
of the sea." I require woods, and they show me stunted 
coppices. I cry out for the water-brooks, and pant for fresh 
streams, and inland murmurs. I cannot stand all day on the 

25 naked beach, watching the capricious hues of the seas, shifting 
like the colours of a dying mullet. I am tired of looking out 
at the windows of this island-prison. I would fain retire into 
the interior of my cage. While I gaze upon the sea, I want 
to be on it, over it, across it. It binds me in with chains, as 

30 of iron. My thoughts are abroad. I should not so feel in 
Staffordshire. There is no home for me here. There is no 
sense of home at Hastings. It is a place of fugitive resort, 
an heterogeneous assemblage of sea-mews and stockbrokers, 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY 1 89 

Amphitrites of the town, and misses that coquet with the 
Ocean. If it were what it was in its primitive shape, and 
what it ought to have remained, a fair honest fishing- town, 
and no more, it were something — with a few straggling 
fishermen's huts scattered about, artless as its cliffs, and with 5 
their materials filched from them, it were something. I could 
abide to dwell with Meschek ; to assort with fisher-swains, and 
smugglers. There are, or I dream there are, many of this 
latter occupation here. Their faces become the place. I like 
a smuggler. He is the only honest thief. He robs nothing 10 
but the revenue, — an abstraction I never greatly cared about. 
I could go out with them in their mackerel boats, or about 
their less ostensible business, with some satisfaction. I can 
even tolerate these poor victims to monotony, who from day 
to day pace along the beach, in endless progress and recur- 15 
rence, to watch their illicit countrymen — townsfolk or breth- 
ren perchance — whisthng to the sheathing and unsheathing 
of their cutlasses (their only solace), who under the mild name 
of preventive service, keep up a legitimated civil warfare in 
the deplorable absence of a foreign one, to show their detes- 20 
tation of run hollands, and zeal for old England. But it is the 
visitants from town that come here to say that they have been 
here, with no more relish of the sea than a pond perch, or a 
dace might be supposed to have, that are my aversion. I feel 
like a foolish dace in these regions, and have as little toleration 25 
for myself here, as for them. What can they want here? if 
they had a true relish of the ocean, why have they brought all 
this land luggage with them ? or why pitch their civilized tents 
in the desert? What mean these scanty book-rooms — marine 
libraries as they entitle them — if the sea were, as they would 30 
have us believe, a book " to read strange matter in? " what are 
their foolish concert-rooms, if they come, as they would fain 
be thought to do, to listen to the music of the waves ? All is 
false and hollow pretension. They come, because it is the 



190 THE OLD MARGATE HOY 

fashion, and to spoil the nature of the place. They are mostly, 
as I have said, stock-brokers ; but I have watched the better 
sort of them — now and then, an honest citizen (of the old 
stamp), in the simplicity of his heart, shall bring down his wife 
5 and daughters, to taste the sea breezes. I always know the 
date of their arrival. It is easy to see it in their countenance. 
A day or two they go wandering on the shingles, picking up 
cockle-shells, and thinking them great things ; but, in a poor 
week, imagination slackens : they begin to discover that cockles 

10 produce no pearls, and then — O then ! — if I could interpret 
for the pretty creatures (I know they have not the courage to 
confess it themselves) how gladly would they exchange their 
sea-side rambles for a Sunday walk on the green-sward of their 
accustomed Twickenham meadows ! 

15 I would ask of one of these sea-charmed emigrants, who 
think they truly love the sea, with its wild usages, what would 
their feelings be, if some of the unsophisticated aborigines of 
this place, encouraged by their courteous questionings here, 
should venture, on the faith of such assured sympathy between 

20 them, to return the visit, and come up to see — London. I 
must imagine them with their fishing-tackle on their back, as 
we carry our town necessaries. What a sensation would it 
cause in Lothbury ! What vehement laughter would it not 
excite among 

25 The daughters of Cheapside, and wives of Lombard Street ! 

I am sure that no town-bred, or inland-born subjects, can 
feel their true and natural nourishment at these sea-places, .j 
Nature, where she does not mean us for mariners and vaga- 
bonds, bids us stay at home. The salt foam seems to nourish 
30 a spleen. I am not half so good-natured as by the milder r 
waters of my natural river. I would exchange these sea-gulls 
for swans, and scud a swallow for ever about the banks of 
Thamesis. 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE 191 



XXVI. BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE 

I DO not know a pleasure more affecting than to range at 
will over the deserted apartments of some fine old family 
mansion. The traces of extinct grandeur admit of a better 
passion than envy : and contemplations on the great and 
good, whom we fancy in succession to have been its inhab- 5 
itants, weave for us illusions, incompatible with the bustle of 
modern occupancy, and vanities of foolish present aristocracy. 
The same difference of feeling, I think, attends us between 
entering an empty and a crowded church. In the latter it 
is chance but some present human frailty — an act of inat- 10 
tention on the part of some of the auditory — or a trait of 
affectation, or worse, vain-glory, on that of the preacher — 
puts us by our best thoughts, disharmonizing the place and 
the occasion. But would'st thou know the beauty of holi- 
ness? — go alone on some week-day, borrowing the keys of 15 
good Master Sexton, traverse the cool aisles of some country 
church : think of the piety that has kneeled there — the con- 
gregations, old and young, that have found consolation there 
— the meek pastor — the docile parishioner. With no dis- 
turbing emotions, no cross conflicting comparisons, drink in 20 
the tranquilHty of the place, till thou thyself become as fixed 
and motionless as the marble effigies that kneel and weep 
around thee. 

Journeying northward lately, I could not resist going some 
few miles out of my road to look upon the remains of an old 25 
great house with which I had been impressed in this way in 
infancy. I was apprised that the owner of it had lately pulled 
it down ; still I had a vague notion that it could not all have 
perished, that so much solidity with magnificence could not 
have been crushed all at once into the mere dust and rubbish 30 
which I found it. 



192 BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE 

The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift hand indeed, 
and the demohtion of a few weeks had reduced it to — an 
antiquity. 

I was astonished at the indistinction of everything. Where had 

5 stood the great gates ? What bounded the courtyard ? Where- 
about did the out-houses commence? a few bricks only lay as 
representatives of that which was so stately and so spacious. 

Death does not shrink up his human victim at this rate. 
The burnt ashes of a man weigh more in their proportion. 

10 Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves at their process 
of destruction, at the plucking of every panel I should have 
felt the varlets at my heart. I should have cried out to them 
to spare a plank at least out of the cheerful store-room, in 
whose hot window-seat I used to sit and read Cowley, with the 

1 5 grass-plat before, and the hum and flappings of that one soli- 
tary wasp that ever haunted it about me — it is in mine ears 
now, as oft as summer returns ; or a panel of the yellow room. 
Why, every plank and panel of that house for me had magic 
in it. The tapestried bedrooms — tapestry so much better 

20 than painting — not adorning merely, but peopling the wain- 
scots — at which childhood ever and anon would steal and 
look, shifting its coverlid (replaced as quickly) to exercise its 
tender courage in a momentary eye-encounter with those stern 
bright visages, staring reciprocally — all Ovid on the walls, in 

25 colours vivider than his descriptions. Actseon in mid sprout, 
with the unappeasable prudery of Diana ; and the still more 
provoking, and almost culinary coolness of Dan Phoebus, eel- 
fashion, deliberately divesting of Marsyas. 

Then, that haunted room — in which old Mrs. Battle died — 

30 whereinto I have crept, but always in the daytime, with a passion 
of fear ; and a sneaking curiosity, terror-tainted, to hold com- 
munication with the past. — How shall they build it up again ? 
It was an old deserted place, yet not so long deserted but 
that traces of the splendour of past inmates were everywhere 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE 1 93 

apparent. Its furniture was still standing — even to the tar- 
nished gilt leather battledores, and crumbling feathers of shuttle- 
cocks in the nursery, which told that children had once played 
there. But I was a lonely child, and had the range at will of 
every apartment, knew every nook and corner, wondered and 5 
worshipped everywhere. 

The solitude of childhood is not so much the mother of 
thought, as it is the feeder of love, and silence and admiration. 
So strange a passion for the place possessed me in those years, 
that, though there lay — I shame to say how few roods distant 10 
from the mansion — half hid by trees, what I judged some 
romantic lake, such was the spell which bound me to the 
house, and such my carefulness not to pass its strict and 
proper precincts, that the idle waters lay unexplored for me ; 
and not till late in life, curiosity prevailing over elder devo- 15 
tion, I found, to my astonishment, a pretty brawling brook had 
been the Lacus Incognitus of my infancy. Variegated views, 
extensive prospects — and those at no great distance from the 
house — I was told of such — what were they to me, being 
out of the boundaries of my Eden? — So far from a wish to 20 
roam, I would have drawn, methought, still closer the fences 
of my chosen prison ; and have been hemmed in by a yet 
securer cincture of those excluding garden walls. I could 
have exclaimed with that garden-loving poet — 

Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines ; 25 

Curl me about, ye gadding vines ; 

And oh so close your circles lace, 

That I may never leave this place ; 

But, lest your fetters prove too weak, 

Ere I your silken bondage break, 30 

Do you, O brambles, chain me too, 

And, courteous briars, nail me through. 1 

1 Marvell on Appleton House, to the Lord Fairfax. 



194 BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE 

I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug firesides — the low- 
built roof — parlours ten feet by ten — frugal boards, and all 
the homeliness of home — these were the condition of my birth 
— the wholesome soil which I was planted in. Yet, without 
5 impeachment to their tenderest lessons, I am not sorry to 
have had glances of something beyond ; and to have taken, if 
but a peep, in childhood, at the contrasting accidents of a 
great fortune. 

To have the feehng of gentility, it is not necessary to have 

lo been born gentle. The pride of ancestry may be had on 
cheaper terms than to be obhged to an importunate race of 
ancestors ; and the coatless antiquary in his unemblazoned 
cell, revolving the long line of a Mowbray's or De Clifford's 
pedigree, at those sounding names may warm himself into as 

15 gay a vanity as those who do inherit them. The claims of birth 
are ideal merely, and what herald shall go about to strip me of 
an idea? Is it trenchant to their swords? can it be hacked off 
as a spur can? or torn away like a tarnished garter? 

What, else, were the families of the great to us? what 

20 pleasure should we take in their tedious genealogies, or their 
capitulatory brass monuments? What to us the uninterrupted 
current of their bloods, if our own did not answer within us to 
a cognate and correspondent elevation. 

Or wherefore, else, O tattered and diminished 'Scutcheon 

25 that hung upon the time-worn walls of thy princely stairs, 
Blakesmoor ! have I in childhood so oft stood poring upon 
thy mystic characters — thy emblematic supporters, with their 
prophetic " Resurgam " — till, every dreg of peasantry purging 
off, I received into myself Very Gentility? Thou wert first in 

30 my morning eyes ; and of nights, hast detained my steps from 
bedward, till it was but a step from gazing at thee to dreaming 
on thee. 

This is the only true gentry by adoption ; the veritable change 
of blood, and not, as empirics have fabled, by transfusion. 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE I95 

Who it was by dying that had earned the splendid trophy, 
I knew not, I inquired not ; but its fading rags, and colours 
cobweb-stained, told that its subject was of two centuries 
back. 

And what if ray ancestor at that date was some Damoetas — 5 
feeding flocks, not his own, upon the hills of Lincoln — did I 
in less earnest vindicate to myself the family trappings of this 
once proud ^gon? — repaying by a backward triumph the 
insults he might possibly have heaped in his lifetime upon my 
poor pastoral progenitor. 10 

If it were presumption so to speculate, the present owners 
of the mansion had least reason to complain. They had long 
forsaken the old house of their fathers for a newer trifle ; and 
I was left to appropriate to myself what images I could pick 
up, to raise my fancy, or to soothe my vanity. 15 

I was the true descendant of those old W s ; and not 

the present family of that name, who had fled the old waste 
places. 

Mine was that gallery of good old family portraits, which as 
I have gone over, giving them in fancy my own family name, 20 
one — and then another — would seem to smile, reaching for- 
ward from the canvas, to recognize the new relationship ; while 
the rest looked grave, as it seemed, at the vacancy in their 
dwelling, and thoughts of fled posterity. 

That Beauty with the cool blue pastoral drapery, and a 25 
lamb — that hung next the great bay window — with the 

bright yellow H shire hair, and eye of watchet hue — so 

like my Alice ! — I am persuaded she was a true Elia — 
Mildred Elia, I take it. 

[From her, and from my passion for her — for I first learned 30 
love from a picture — Bridget took the hint of those pretty 
whimsical lines, which thou mayst see, if haply thou hast never 
seen them. Reader, in the margin. But my Mildred grew not 
old, like the imaginary Helen.] 



196 BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE" 

Mine too, Blakesmoor, was thy noble Marble Hall, with 
its mosaic pavements, and its Twelve Caesars — stately busts 
in marble — ranged round : of whose countenances, young 
reader of faces as I was, the frowning beauty of Nero, I remem- 
5 ber, had most of my wonder ; but the mild Galba had my 
love. There they stood in the coldness of death, yet fresh- 
ness of immortality. 

Mine too, thy lofty Justice Hall, with its one chair of 
authority, high-backed and wickered, once the terror of luck- 

10 less poacher, or self-forgetful maiden — so common since, 
that bats have roosted in it. 

Mine too — whose else? — thy costly fruit-garden, with its 
sun-baked southern wall ; the ampler pleasure-garden, rising 
backwards from the house in triple terraces, with flower-pots 

15 now of palest lead, save that a speck here and there, saved 
from the elements, bespake their pristine state to have been gilt 
and glittering ; the verdant quarters backwarder still ; and, 
stretching still beyond, in old formality, thy firry wilderness, 
the haunt of the squirrel, and the day-long murmuring wood- 

20 pigeon, with that antique image in the centre, God or Goddess 
I wist not ; but child of Athens or old Rome paid never a 
sincerer worship to Pan or to Sylvanus in their native groves, 
than I to that fragmental mystery. 

Was it for this, that I kissed my childish hands too fervently 

25 in your idol worship, walks and windings of Blakesmoor ! for 
this, or what sin of mine, has the plough passed over your 
pleasant places? I sometimes think that as men, when they 
die, do not die all, so of their extinguished habitations there 
may be a hope — a germ to be revivified. 



CAPTAIN JACKSON I97 



XXVII. CAPTAIN JACKSON 

Among the deaths of our obituary for this month, I observe 
with concern "At his cottage on the Bath road, Captain 
Jackson." The name and attribution are common enough; 
but a feeling hke reproach persuades me, that this could have 
been no other in fact than my dear old friend, who some five- 5 
and-twenty years ago rented a tenement, which he was pleased 
to dignify with the appellation here used, about a mile from 
Westbourne Green. Alack, how good men, and the good 
turns they do us, slide out of memory, and are recalled but by 
the surprise of some such sad memento as that which now lies 10 
before us ! 

He whom I mean was a retired half-pay officer, with a 
wife and two grown-up daughters, whom he maintained 
with the port and notions of gentlewomen upon that slender 
professional allowance. Comely girls they were too. 1 5 

And was I in danger of forgetting this man ? — his cheerful 
suppers — the noble tone of hospitality, when first you set your 
foot in the cottage — the anxious ministerings about you, where 
little or nothing (God knows) was to be ministered. ^ — Althea's 
horn in a poor platter — the power of self-enchantment, by 20 
which, in his magnificent wishes to entertain you, he multiplied 
his means to bounties. 

You saw with your bodily eyes indeed what seemed a bare 
scrag — cold savings from the foregone meal — remnant 
hardly sufficient to send a mendicant from the door con- 25 
tented. But in the copious will — the revelling imagination 
of your host — the "mind, the mind. Master Shallow," whole 
beeves were spread before you — hecatombs — no end appeared 
to the profusion. 

, It was the widow's cruse — the loaves and fishes ; carving 30 
could not lessen nor helping diminish it — the stamina were 



198 CAPTAIN JACKSON 

left — the elemental bone still flourished, divested of its 
accidents. 

" Let us live while we can," me thinks I hear the open- 
handed creature exclaim; "while we have, let us not want," 

5 '' here is plenty left ; " " want for nothing " — with many more 
such hospitable sayings, the spurs of appetite, and old con- 
comitants of smoking boards, and feast-oppressed chargers. 
Then sliding a slender ratio of Single Gloucester upon his 
wife's plate, or the daughter's, he would convey the remnant 

10 rind into his own, with a merry quirk of "the nearer the 
bone," &c., and declaring that he universally preferred the 
outside. For we had our table distinctions, you are to know, 
and some of us in a manner sate above the salt. None but 
his guest or guests dreamed of tasting flesh luxuries at night, 

15 the fragments were vere hospitibus sacra. But of one thing or 
another there was always enough, and leavings : only he would 
sometimes finish the remainder crust, to show that he wished 
no savings. 

Wine we had none ; nor, except on very rare occasions, 

20 spirits ; but the sensation of wine was there. Some thin kind 
of ale I remember — "British beverage," he would say ! "Push 
about, my boys;" "Drink to your sweethearts, girls." At 
every meagre draught a toast must ensue, or a song. All the 
forms of good liquor were there, with none of the effects want- 

25 ing. Shut your eyes, and you would swear a capacious bowl 
of punch was foaming in the centre, with beams of generous 
Port or Madeira radiating to it from each of the table corners. 
You got flustered, without knowing whence; tipsy upon 
words ; and reeled under the potency of his unperforming 

30 Bacchanalian encouragements. 

We had our songs — "Why, Soldiers, Why" — and the 
"British Grenadiers" — in which last we were all obliged to 
bear chorus. Both the daughters sang. Their proficiency 
was a nightly theme — the masters he had given them — the 



CAPTAIN JACKSON 1 99 

"no-expense" which he spared to accomphsh them in a 
science " so necessary to young women." But then — they 
could not sing " without the instrument." 

Sacred, and by me, never-to-be-violated, Secrets of Poverty ! 
Should I disclose your honest aims at grandeur, your make- 5 
shift efforts of magnificence? Sleep, sleep, with all thy 
broken keys, if one of the bunch be extant; thrummed by 
a thousand ancestral thumbs ; dear cracked spinnet of dearer 
Louisa ! Without mention of mine, be dumb, thou thin 
accompanier of her thinner warble ! A veil be spread over lo 
the dear delighted face of the well-deluded father, who now 
haply listening to cherubic notes, scarce feels sincerer pleas- 
ure than when she awakened thy time-shaken chords responsive 
to the twitterings of that slender image of a voice. 

We were not without our literary talk either. It did not 15 
extend far, but as far as it went, it was good. It was bottomed 
well; had good grounds to go upon. In the cottage was a 
room, which tradition authenticated to have been the same in 
which Glover, in his occasional retirements, had penned the 
greater part of his Leonidas. This circumstance was nightly 20 
quoted, though none of the present inmates, that I could 
discover, appeared ever to have met with the poem in ques- 
tion. But that was no matter. Glover had written there, and 
the anecdote was pressed into the account of the family 
importance. It diffused a learned air through the apartment, 25 
the little side casement of which (the poet's study window), 
opening upon a superb view as far as to the pretty spire of 
Harrow, over domains and patrimonial acres, not a rood nor 
square yard whereof our host could call his own, yet gave 
occasion to an immoderate expansion of — vanity shall I call 30 
it ? — in his bosom, as he showed them in a glowing summer 
evening. It was all his, he took it all in, and communicated 
rich portions of it to his guests. It was a part of his largess, 
his hospitality ; it was going over his grounds ; he was lord 



200 CAPTAIN JACKSON 

for the time of showing them, and you the implicit lookers-up 
to his magnificence. 

He was a juggler, who threw mists before your eyes — you 
had no time to detect his fallacies. He would say " hand me 
5 the silver sugar tongs ; " and, before you could discover it was 
a single spoon, and that plated^ he would disturb and capti- 
vate your imagination by a misnomer of " the urn " for a tea- 
kettle ; or by calling a homely bench a sofa. Rich men direct 
you to their furniture, poor ones divert you from it ; he neither 

lo did one nor the other, but by simply assuming that everything 
was handsome about him, you were positively at a demur what 
you did, or did not see, at the cottage. With nothing to live 
on, he seemed to live on everything. He had a stock of 
wealth in his mind ; not that which is properly termed Content, 

15 for in truth he was not to be contained at all, but overflowed 
all bounds by the force of a magnificent self-delusion. 

Enthusiasm is catching ; and even his wife, a sober native 
of North Britain, who generally saw things more as they were, 
was not proof against the continual collision of his credulity. 

20 Her daughters were rational and discreet young women ; in 
the main, perhaps, not insensible to their true circumstances. 
I have seen them assume a thoughtful air at times. But such 
was the preponderating opulence of his fancy, that I am per- 
suaded, not for any half-hour together, did they ever look their 

25 own prospects fairly in the face. There was no resisting the 
vortex of his temperament. His riotous imagination conjured 
up handsome settlements before their eyes, which kept them 
up in the eye of the world too, and seem at last to have realized 
themselves ; for they both have married since, I am told, more 

30 than respectably. 

It is long since, and my memory waxes dim on some sub- 
jects, or I should wish to convey some notion of the manner in 
which the pleasant creature described the circumstances of his 
own wedding-day. I faintly remember something of a chaise and 



BARBARA S 20I 

four, in which he made his entry into Glasgow on that morning 
to fetch the bride home, or carry her thither, I forget which. 
It so completely made out the stanza of the old ballad — 

When we came down through Glasgow town, 

We were a comely sight to see ; 5 

My love was clad in black velvet, 
And I myself in cramasie. 

I suppose it was the only occasion, upon which his own 
actual splendour at all corresponded with the world's notions 
on that subject. In homely cart, or travelling caravan, by what- 10 
ever humble vehicle they chanced to be transported in less 
prosperous days, the ride through Glasgow came back upon 
his fancy, not as a humiliating contrast, but as a fair occasion 
for reverting to that one day's state. It seemed an " equipage 
etern " from which no power of fate or fortune, once mounted, 15 
had power thereafter to dislodge him. 

There is some merit in putting a handsome face upon indi- 
gent circumstances. To bully and swagger away the sense of 
them before strangers, may not be always discommendable. 
Tibbs, and Bobadil, even when detected, have more of our 20 
admiration than contempt. But for a man to put the cheat 
upon himself; to play the Bobadil at home; and, steeped in 
poverty up to the lips, to fancy himself all the while chin-deep 
in riches, is a strain of constitutional philosophy, and a mastery 
over fortune, which was reserved for my old friend Captain 25 
Jackson. 

XXVIII. BARBARA S 



On the noon of the 14th of November, 1743 or 4, I forget 

which it was, just as the clock had struck one, Barbara S , 

with her accustomed punctuality, ascended the long rambhng 
staircase, with awkward interposed landing-places, which led 30 



202 BARBARA S- 



to the office, or rather a sort of box with a desk in it, whereat 
sat the then Treasurer of (what few of our readers may remem- 
ber) the old Bath Theatre. All over the island it was the 
custom, and remains so I believe to this day, for the players 
5 to receive their weekly stipend on the Saturday. It was not 
much that Barbara had to claim. 

This little maid had just entered her eleventh year ; but her 
important station at the theatre, as it seemed to her, with the 
benefits which she felt to accrue from her pious application of 

lo her small earnings, had given an air of womanhood to her steps 
and to her behaviour. You would have taken her to have 
been at least five years older. 

Till latterly she had merely been employed in choruses, or 
where children were wanted to fill up the scene. But the 

15 manager, observing a diligence and adroitness in her above 
her age, had for some few months past entrusted to her the 
performance of whole parts. You may guess the self-conse- 
quence of the promoted Barbara. She had already drawn tears 
in young Arthur ; had raUied Richard with infantine petulance 

20 in the Duke of York ; and in her turn had rebuked that petu- 
lance when she was Prince of Wales. She would have done 
the elder child in Morton's pathetic after-piece to the life ; 
but as yet the Childre7i in the Wood was not. 

Long after this little girl was grown an aged woman, I 

25 have seen some of these small parts, each making two or 
three pages at most, copied out in the rudest hand of the then 
prompter, who doubtless transcribed a little more carefully 
and fairly for the grown-up tragedy ladies of the establishment. 
But such as they were, blotted and scrawled, as for a child's 

30 use, she kept them all ; and in the zenith of her after-repu- 
tation it was a dehghtful sight to behold them bound up in 
costliest Morocco, each single — each small part making a 
book — with fine clasps, gilt splashed, &c. She had conscien- 
tiously kept them as they had been delivered to her; not a 



BARBARA S 203 

blot had been effaced or tampered with. They were precious 
to her for their affecting remembrancings. They were her 
principia, her rudiments ; the elementary atoms ; the little 
steps by which she pressed forward to perfection. "What," 
she would say, " could india-rubber, or a pumice stone, have 5 
done for these darlings?" 

I am in no hurry to begin my story — indeed I have little 
or none to tell — so I will just mention an observation of hers 
connected with that interesting time. 

Not long before she died, I had been discoursing with her 10 
on the quantity of real present emotion which a great tragic 
performer experiences during acting. I ventured to think, 
that though in the first instance such players must have pos- 
sessed the feelings which they so powerfully called up in others, 
yet by frequent repetition those feelings must become deadened 15 
in great measure, and the performer trust to the memory of 
past emotion, rather than express a present one. She indig- 
nantly repelled the notion, that with a truly great tragedian 
the operation, by which such effects were produced upon 
an audience, could ever degrade itself into what was purely 20 
mechanical. With much delicacy, avoiding to instance in her 
self experience, she told me, that so long ago as when she 
used to play the part of the Little Son to Mrs. Porter's Isabella 
(I think it was), when that impressive actress has been bend- 
ing over her in some heart-rending colloquy, she has felt real 25 
hot tears come trickHng from her, which (to use her powerful 
expression) have perfectly scalded her back. 

I am not quite so sure that it was Mrs. Porter ; but it was 
some great actress of that day. The name is indifferent ; but 
the fact of the scalding tears I most distinctly remember. 30 

I was always fond of the society of players, and am not sure 
that an impediment in my speech (which certainly kept me 
out of the pulpit) even more than certain personal disquali- 
fications, which are often got over in that profession, did not 



204 BARBARA S 

prevent me at one time of life from adopting it. I have had 
the honour (I must ever call it) once to have been admitted to 
the tea-table of Miss Kelly. I have played at serious whist 
with Mr. Liston. I have chatted with ever good-humoured 
5 Mrs. Charles Kemble. I have conversed as friend to friend 
with her accomplished husband. I have been indulged with a 
classical conference with Macready ; and with a sight of the 
Player-picture gallery, at Mr. Matthews's, when the kind owner, 
to remunerate me for my love of the old actors (whom he 

lo loves so much), went over it with me, supplying to his capital 
collection, what alone the artist could not give them — voice ; 
and their living motion. Old tones, half-faded, of Dodd and 
Parsons and Baddeley, have lived again for me at his bidding. 
Only Edwin he could not restore to me. I have supped with 

1 5 ; but I am growing a coxcomb. 

As I was about to say — at the desk of the then treasurer 
of the old Bath Theatre — not Diamond's — presented herself 

the little Barbara S . 

The parents of Barbara had been in reputable circumstances. 

20 The father had practised, I believe, as an apothecary in the 
town. But his practice from causes which I feel my own 
infirmity too sensibly that way to arraign — or perhaps from 
that pure infelicity which accompanies some people in their 
walk through life, and which it is impossible to lay at the 

25 door of imprudence — was now reduced to nothing. They 
were in fact in the very teeth of starvation, when the manager, 
who knew and respected them in better days, took the little 
Barbara into his company. 

At the period I commenced with, her slender earnings 

30 were the sole support of the family, including two younger 
sisters. I must throw a veil over some mortifying circum- 
stances. Enough to say, that her Saturday's pittance was 
the only chance of a Sunday's (generally their only) meal 
of meat. 



BARBARA S 205 

One thing I will only mention, that in some child's part, 
where in her theatrical character she was to sup off a roast 
fowl (O joy to Barbara !) some comic actor, who was for the 
night caterer for this dainty — in the misguided humour of his 
part, threw over the dish such a quantity of salt (O grief and 5 
pain of heart to Barbara ! ) that when he crammed a portion 
of it into her mouth, she was obliged sputteringly to reject it ; 
and what with shame of he^ ill-acted part, and pain of real 
appetite at missing such a dainty, her little heart sobbed almost 
to breaking, till a flood of tears, which the well-fed spectators 10 
were totally unable to comprehend, mercifully relieved her. 

This was the little starved, meritorious maid, who stood before 
old Ravenscroft, the treasurer, for her Saturday's payment. 

Ravenscroft was a man, I have heard many old theatrical 
people besides herself say, of all men least calculated for a 15 
treasurer. He had no head for accounts, paid away at ran- 
dom, kept scarce any books, and summing up at the week's 
end, if he found himself a pound or so deficient, blest himself 
that it was no worse. 

Now Barbara's weekly stipend was a bare half guinea. — By 20 
mistake he popped into her hand a — whole one. 

Barbara tripped away.^ 

She was entirely unconscious at first of the mistake : God 
knows, Ravenscroft would never have discovered it. 

But when she had got down to the first of those uncouth 25 
landing-places, she became sensible of an unusual weight of 
metal pressing her little hand. 

Now mark the dilemma. 

She was by nature a good child. From her parents and 
those about her she had imbibed no contrary influence. But 30 
then they had taught her nothing. Poor men's smoky cabins 
are not always porticoes of moral philosophy. This little maid 
had no instinct to evil, but then she might be said to have no 
fixed principle. She had heard honesty commended, "but 



206 BARBARA S- 



never dreamed of its application to herself. She thought of it 
as something which concerned grown-up people — men and 
women. She had never known temptation, or thought of 
preparing resistance against it. 
5 Her first impulse was to go back to the old treasurer, and 
explain to him his blunder. He was already so confused with 
age, besides a natural want of punctuality, that she would have 
had some difficulty in making him understand it. She saw 
that in an instant. And then it was such a bit of money ! 

10 and then the image of a larger allowance of butcher's meat on 
their table next day came across her, till her little eyes glis- 
tened, and her mouth moistened. But then Mr. Ravenscroft 
had always been so good-natured, had stood her friend behind 
the scenes, and even recommended her promotion to some of 

15 her little parts. But again the old man was reputed to be 
worth a world of money. He was supposed to have fifty 
pounds a year clear of the theatre. And then came staring 
upon her the figures of her little stockingless and shoeless 
sisters. And when she looked at her own neat white cotton 

20 stockings, which her situation at the theatre had made it indis- 
pensable for her mother to provide for her, with hard straining 
and pinching from the family stock, and thought how glad she 
should be to cover their poor feet with the same — and how 
then they could accompany her to rehearsals, which they had 

25 hitherto been precluded from doing, by reason of their unfash- 
ionable attire, — in these thoughts she reached the second 
landing-place — the second, I mean from the top — for there 
was still another left to traverse. 
Now virtue support Barbara ! 

30 And that never-failing friend did step in — for at thatj 
moment a strength not her own I have heard her say, wasj 
revealed to her — a reason above reasoning — and without her. 
own agency, as it seemed (for she never felt her feet to move) 
she found herself transported back to the individual desk she had 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 20/ 

just quitted, and her hand in the old hand of Ravenscroft, who 
in silence took back the refunded treasure, and who had been 
sitting (good man) insensible to the lapse of minutes, which to 
her were anxious ages ; and from that moment a deep peace 
fell upon her heart, and she knew the quality of honesty. 5 

A year or two's unrepining application to her profession 
brightened up the feet and the prospects of her little sisters, set 
the whole family upon their legs again, and released her from the 
difficulty of discussing moral dogmas upon a landing-place. 

I have heard her say, that it was a surprise, not much short 10 
of mortification to her, to see the coolness with which the old 
man pocketed the difference, which had caused her such 
mortal throes. 

This anecdote of herself I had in the year 1800, from the 
mouth of the late Mrs. Crawford,^ then sixty-seven years of 15 
age (she died soon after) ; and to her struggles upon this 
childish occasion I have sometimes ventured to think her 
indebted for that power of rending the heart in the repre- 
sentation of conflicting emotions, for which in after-years she 
was considered as little inferior (if at all so in the part of Lady 20 
Randolph) even to Mrs. Siddons. 

XXIX. THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 

Sera tamen respexit 
Libertas, Virgil. 

A Clerk I was in London gay. 

O'Keefe. " 

If peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the 
golden years of thy life — thy shining youth — in the irksome 
confinement of an office ; to have thy prison days prolonged 

1 The maiden name of this lady was Street, which she changed, by 
successive marriages, for those of Dancer, Barry, and Crawford. She 
was Mrs. Crawford, a third time a widow, when I knew her. 



208 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 

through middle age down to decrepitude and silver hairs with- 
out hope of release or respite ; to have lived to forget that 
there are such things as holidays, or to remember them but as 
the prerogatives of childhood ; then, and then only, will you 
5 be able to appreciate my deliverance. 

It is now six-and-thirty years since I took my seat at the 
desk in Mincing Lane. Melancholy was the transition at 
fourteen from the abundant play-time, and the frequently- 
intervening vacations of school-days, to the eight, nine, and 

10 sometimes ten hours' a day attendance at a counting-house. 
But time partially reconciles us to anything. I gradually 
became content — doggedly contented, as wild animals in 
cages. 

It is true I had my Sundays to myself; but Sundays, 

15 admirable as the institution of them is for purposes of worship, 
are for that very reason the very worst adapted for days of 
unbending and recreation.^ In particular, there is a gloom for 
me attendant upon a city Sunday, a weight in the air. I miss 
the cheerful cries of London, the music, and the ballad-singers 

20 — the buzz and stirring murmur of the streets. Those eternal 
bells depress me. The closed shops repel me. Prints, 
pictures, all the glittering and endless succession of knacks 
and gewgaws, and ostentatiously displayed wares of tradesmen, 
which make a week-day saunter through the less busy parts of 

25 the metropolis so delightful — are shut out. No book-stalls 

1 Our ancestors, the noble old Puritans of Cromwell's day, could 
distinguish between a day of religious rest and a day of recreation ; and 
while they exacted a rigorous abstinence from all amusements (even to 
the walking out of nurserymaids with their little charges in the fields) 
upon the Sabbath ; in the lieu of the superstitious observance of the 
saints' days, which they abrogated, they humanely gave to the appren- 
tices and poorer sort of people every alternate Thursday for a day of 
entire sport and recreation. A strain of piety and policy to be com- 
mended above the profane mockery of the Stuarts and their book of 
sports. 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 209 

deliciously to idle over — no busy faces to recreate the idle 
man who contemplates them ever passing by — the very face 
of business a charm by contrast to his temporary relaxation 
from it. Nothing to be seen but unhappy countenances — - 
or half-happy at best — of emancipated 'prentices and little 5 
tradesfolks, with here and there a servant-maid that has got 
leave to go out, who slaving all the week, with the habit has 
lost almost all the capacity of enjoying a free hour ; and live- 
lily expressing the hollo wness of a day's pleasuring. The 
very strollers in the fields on that day look anything but 10 
comfortable. 

But besides Sundays I had a day at Easter, and a day at 
Christmas, with a full week in the summer to go and air myself 
in my native fields of Hertfordshire. This last was a great 
indulgence; and the prospect of its recurrence, I believe, 15 
alone kept me up through the year, and made my durance 
tolerable. But when the week came round, did the glittering • 
phantom of the distance keep touch with me ? or rather was 
it not a series of seven uneasy days, spent in restless pursuit of 
pleasure, and a wearisome anxiety to find out how to make the 20 
most of them? Where was the quiet, where the promised rest? 
Before I had a taste of it, it was vanished. I was at the desk 
again, counting upon the fifty-one tedious weeks that must 
intervene before such another snatch would come. Still the 
prospect of its coming threw something of an illumination upon 25 
the darker side of my captivity. Without it, as I have said, I 
could scarcely have sustained my thraldom. 

Independently of the rigours of attendance, I have ever been 
haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of incapacity 
for business. This, during my latter years, had increased to 3° 
such a degree, that it was visible in all the lines of my counte- 
nance. My health and my good spirits flagged. I had per- 
petually a dread of some crisis, to which I should be found 
unequal. Besides my daylight servitude, I served over again 



2IO THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 

all night in my sleep, and would wake with terrors of imagi- 
nary false entries, errors in my accounts, and the like. I was 
fifty years of age, and no prospect of emancipation presented 
itself. I had grown to my desk, as it were ; and the wood 
5 had entered into my soul. 

My fellows in the office would sometimes rally me upon the 
trouble legible in my countenance ; but I did not know that 
it had raised the suspicions of any of my employers, when, on 
the 5 th of last month, a day ever to be remembered by me, 

10 L , the junior partner in the firm, calling me on one side, 

directly taxed me with my bad looks, and frankly inquired the 
cause of them. So taxed, I honestly made confession of my 
infirmity, and added that I was afraid I should eventually be 
obliged to resign his service. He spoke some words of course 

15 to hearten me, and there the matter rested. A whole week 
I remained labouring under the impression that I had acted 
imprudently in my disclosure ; that I had foolishly given a 
handle against myself, and had been anticipating my own dis- 
missal. A week passed in this manner, the most anxious one, 

20 I verily believe, in my whole life, when on the evening of 
the 12 th of April, just as I was about quitting my desk to go 
home (it might be about eight o'clock) I received an awful 
summons to attend the presence of the whole assembled firm 
in the formidable back parlour. I thought. Now my time is 

25 surely come, I have done for myself, I am going to be told 

that they have no longer occasion for me. L , I could see, 

smiled at the terror I was in, which was a little relief to me, 

— when to my utter astonishment B , the eldest partner, 

began a formal harangue to me on the length of my services, 

30 my very meritorious conduct during the whole of the time 
(the deuce, thought I, how did he find out that? I protest I 
never had the confidence to think as much). He went on to 
descant on the expediency of retiring at a certain time of life 
(how my heart panted !) and asking me a few questions as to 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 211 

the amount of my own property, of which I have a Uttle, ended 
with a proposal, to which his three partners nodded a grave 
assent, that I should accept from the house which I had served 
so well, a pension for life to the amount of two-thirds of my 
accustomed salary — a magnificent offer ! I do not know what 5 
I answered between surprise and gratitude, but it was under- 
stood that I accepted their proposal, and I was told that I was 
free from that hour to leave their service. I stammered out a 
bow, and at just ten minutes after eight I went home — for 
ever. This noble benefit — gratitude forbids me to conceal their 10 
names — I owe to the kindness of the most munificent firm in 
the world — the house of Boldero, Merryweather, Bosanquet, 
and Lacy. 

Esto perpetua ! 

For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed. I 15 
could only apprehend my felicity ; I was too confused to taste 
it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking I was happy, and 
knowing that I was not. I was in the condition of a prisoner 
in the old Bastile, suddenly let loose after a forty years' con- 
finement. I could scarce trust myself with myself. It was 20 
like passing out of Time into Eternity — for it is a sort of 
Eternity for a man to have his Time all to himself. It seemed 
to me that I had more time on my hands than I could ever 
manage. From a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly 
lifted up into a vast revenue ; I could see no end of my pos- 25 
sessions ; I wanted some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage 
my estates in Time for me. And here let me caution persons 
grown old in active business, not Hghtly, nor without weighing 
their old resources, to forego their customary employment all 
at once, for there may be danger in it. I feel it by myself, 30 
but I know that my resources are sufficient ; and now that 
those first giddy raptures have subsided, I have a quiet home- 
feeling of the blessedness of my condition. I am in no hurry. 



212 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 

Having all holidays, I am as though I had none. If Time 
hung heavy upon me, I could walk it away ; but I do not walk 
all day long, as I used to do in those old transient holidays, 
thirty miles a day, to make the most of them. If Time were 
5 troublesome, I could read it away, but I do not read in that 
violent measure, with which, having no Time my own but can- 
dle-light Time, I used to weary out my head and eyesight in 
bygone winters. I walk, read, or scribble (as now) just when 
the fit seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure ; I let it 
10 come to me. I am like the man 

That 's born, and has his years come to him 



In some green desert. 

" Years," you will say ! " what is this superannuated simple- 
ton calculating upon? He has already told us, he is past 

15 fifty." 

I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of 
them the hours which I have lived to other people, and not to 
myself, and you will find me still a young fellow. For that is 
the only true Time, which a man can properly call his own, 

20 that which he has all to himself; the rest, though in some 
sense he may be said to live it, is other people's time, not his. 
The remnant of my poor days, long or short, is at least multi- 
plied for me, threefold. My ten next years, if I stretch so far, 
will be as long as any preceding thirty. 'T is a fair rule-of-three 

25 sum. 

Among the strange fantasies which beset me at the com- 
mencement of my freedom, and of which all traces are not yet 
gone, one was, that a vast tract of time had intervened since 
I quitted the Counting-House. I could not conceive of it as 

30 an affair of yesterday. The partners, and the clerks, with whom 
I had for so many years, and for so many hours in each day of 
the year, been closely associated — being suddenly removed 
from them — they seemed as dead to me. There is a fine 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 21 3 

passage, which may serve to illustrate this fancy, in a Tragedy 
by Sir Robert Howard, speaking of a friend's death : 

'T was but just now he went away ; 



I have not since had time to shed a tear; 

And yet the distance does the same appear 5 

As if he had been a thousand years from me, 

Time takes no measure in Eternity. 

To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain to go 
among them once or twice since ; to visit my old desk-fellows 
— my co-brethren of the quill — that I had left below in the 10 
state militant. Not all the kindness with which they received 
me could quite restore me to that pleasant familiarity, which 
I had heretofore enjoyed among them. We cracked some of 
our old jokes, but methought they went off but faintly. My 
old desk; the peg where I hung my hat, were appropriated to 15 
another. I knew it must be, but I could not take it kindly. 

D 1 take me, if I did not feel some remorse — beast, if I 

had not, — at quitting my old compeers, the faithful partners 
of my toil for six-and-thirty years, that smoothed for me with 
their jokes and conundrums the ruggedness of my professional 20 
road. Had it been so rugged then after all? or was I a coward 
simply ? Well, it is too late to repent ; and I also know, that 
these suggestions are a common fallacy of the mind on such 
occasions. But my heart smote me. I had violently broken 
the bands betwixt us. It was at least not courteous. I shall 25 
be some time before I get quite reconciled to the separation. 
Farewell, old cronies, yet not for long, for again and again 
I will come among ye, if I shall have your leave. Farewell 

Ch , dry, sarcastic, and friendly ! Do , mild, slow to 

move, and gentlemanly ! PI , officious to do, and to vol- 30 

unteer, good services ! — and thou, thou dreary pile, fit man- 
sion for a Gresham or a Whittington of old, stately House of 
Merchants ; with thy labyrinthine passages, and light-excluding. 



214 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 

pent-up offices, where candles for one-half the year supplied 
the place of the sun's light ; unhealthy contributor to my weal, 
stern fosterer of my living, farewell ! In thee remain, and not 
in the obscure collection of some wandering bookseller, my 
5 "works!" There let them rest, as I do from my labours, 
piled on thy massy shelves, more MSS. in folio than ever 
Aquinas left, and full as useful ! My mantle I bequeath 
among ye. 

A fortnight has passed since the date of my first communi- 

lo cation. At that period I was approaching to tranquilHty, but 
had not reached it. I boasted of a calm indeed, but it was 
comparative only. Something of the first flutter was left ; an 
unsettling sense of novelty ; the dazzle to weak eyes of unac- 
customed light. I missed my old chains, forsooth, as if they 

15 had been some necessary part of my apparel. I was a poor 
Carthusian, from strict cellular discipline suddenly by some 
revolution returned upon the world. I am now as if I had 
never been other than my own master. It is natural to me to 
go where I please, to do what I please. I find myself at eleven 

20 o'clock in the day in Bond Street, and it seems to me that I 
have been sauntering there at that very hour for years past. I 
digress into Soho, to explore a book-stall. Methinks I have 
been thirty years a collector. There is nothing strange nor 
new in it. I find myself before a fine picture in a morning. 

25 Was it ever otherwise? What is become of Fish Street Hill? 
Where is Fenchurch Street ? Stones of old Mincing Lane which 
I have worn with my daily pilgrimage for six-and-thirty years, 
to the footsteps of what toil-worn clerk are your everlasting 
flints now vocal? I indent the gayer flags of Pall Mall. It is 

30 'Change time, and I am strangely among the Elgin marbles. 
It was no hyperbole when I ventured to compare the change 
in my condition to a passing into another world. Time stands 
still in a manner to me. I have lost all distinction of season. 
I do not know the day of the week, or of the month. Each 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 21 5 

day used to be individually felt by me in its reference to the 
foreign post days ; in its distance from, or propinquity to, 
the next Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday 
nights' sensations. The genius of each day was upon me dis- 
tinctly during the whole of it, affecting my appetite, spirits, 5 
&c. The phantom of the next day, with the dreary five to 
follow, sate as a load upon my poor Sabbath recreations. What 
charm has washed that Ethiop white ? What is gone of Black 
Monday ? All days are the same. Sunday itself — that unfortu- 
nate failure of a holiday as it too often proved, what with my 10 
sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest 
quantity of pleasure out of it — is melted down into a week- 
day. I can spare to go to church now, without grudging the 
huge cantle which it used to seem to cut out of the holiday. 
I have Time for everything. I can visit a sick friend. I can 15 
interrupt a man of much occupation when he is busiest. I 
can insult over him with an invitation to take a day's pleasure 
with me to Windsor this fine May-morning. It is Lucretian 
pleasure to behold the poor drudges, whom I have left behind 
in the world, carking and caring ; like horses in a mill, drudg- 20 
ing on in the same eternal round — and what is it all for? [I 
recite those verses of Cowley which so mightily agree with my 
constitution : — 

Business ! the frivolous pretence 

Of human lusts to shake off innocence : 25 

Business ! the grave impertinence : 

Business ! the thing which I, of all things, hate : 

Business ! the contradiction of my fate. 

Or I repeat my own lines, written in my clerk state : — 

Who first-invented work, &c. — 30 

O this divine leisure ! Reader, if thou art furnished with the 
old series of the "London," turn incontinently to the third 



2l6 SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS 

volume (page 367), and you will see my present condition 
there touched in a " Wish " by a daintier pen than I can pre- 
tend to. I subscribe to that Sonnet toto corde.~\ A man can 
never have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. 
5 Had I a httle son, I would christen him Nothing-to-Do ; he 
should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his element 
as long as he is operative. I am altogether for the life con- 
templative. Will no kindly earthquake come and swallow up 
those accursed cotton mills ? Take me that lumber of a desk 
10 there, and bowl it down 

As low as to the fiends. 

I am no longer ***** *^ clerk to the Firm of &c. I am 
Retired Leisure. I am to be met with in trim gardens. I 
am already come to be known by my vacant face and careless 

15 gesture, perambulating at no fixed pace, nor with any settled 
purpose. I walk about ; not to and from. They tell me, a 
certain cum digtiitate air, that has been buried so long with my 
other good parts, has begun to shoot forth in my person. I 
grow into gentihty perceptibly. When I take up a newspaper, 

20 it is to read the state of the opera. Opus operatiim est. I 
have done all that I came into this world to do. I have worked 
task- work, and have the rest of the day to myself. 

XXX. SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS 

So far from the position holding true, that great wit (or 
genius, in our modern way of speaking) has a necessary 

25 alliance with insanity, the greatest wits, on the contrary, will 
ever be found to be the sanest writers. It is impossible for 
the mind to conceive of a mad Shakespeare. The greatness 
of wit, by which the poetic talent is here chiefly to be 
understood, manifests itself in the admirable balance of all 

30 the faculties. Madness is the disproportionate straining or 



SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS 21/ 

excess of any one of them. " So strong a wit," says Cowley, 
speaking of a poetical friend, 

did Nature to him frame, 



As all things but his judgment overcame, 

His judgment like the heavenly moon did show ^ 

Tempering that mighty sea below. 

The ground of the mistake is, that men, finding in the 
raptures of the higher poetry a condition of exaltation, to 
which they have no parallel in their own experience, besides 
the spurious resemblance of it in dreams and fevers, impute a lo 
state of dreaminess and fever to the poet. But the true poet 
dreams being awake. He is not possessed by his subject, 
but has dominion over it. In the groves of Eden he walks 
familiar as in his native paths. He ascends the empyrean 
heaven, and is not intoxicated. He treads the burning marl 15 
without dismay ; he wins his flight without self-loss through 
realms of chaos "and old night." Or if, abandoning himself 
to that severer chaos of a " human mind untuned," he is 
content awhile to be mad with Lear, or to hate mankind (a 
sort of madness) with Timon, neither is that madness, nor this 20 
misanthropy, so unchecked, but that, — never letting the 
reins of reason wholly go, while most he seems to do so, — he 
has his better genius still whispering at his ear, with the good 
servant Kent suggesting saner counsels, or with the honest 
steward Flavins recommending kindlier resolutions. Where 25 
he seems most to recede from humanity, he will be found the 
truest to it. From beyond the scope of Nature if he summon 
possible existences, he subjugates them to the law of her con- 
sistency. He is beautifully loyal to that sovereign directress, 
even when he appears most to betray and desert her. His 30 
ideal tribes submit to policy ; his very monsters are tamed to 
his hand, even as that wild sea-brood shepherded by Proteus. 
He tames, and he clothes them with attributes of flesh and 



21 8 SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS 

blood till they wonder at themselves, like Indian Islanders 
forced to submit to European vesture. Caliban, the Witches, 
are as true to the laws of their own nature (ours with a differ- 
ence), as Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth. Herein the great 

5 and the Httle wits are differenced ; that if the latter wander 
ever so little from nature or actual existence, they lose them- 
selves and their readers. Their phantoms are lawless ; their 
visions nightmares. They do not create, which implies shaping 
and consistency. Their imaginations are not active — for to 

10 be active is to call something into act and form — but passive, 
as men in sick dreams. For the supernatural, or something 
superadded to what we know of nature, they give you the 
plainly non-natural. And if this were all, and that these 
mental hallucinations were discoverable only in the treatment of 

IS subjects out of nature, or transcending it, the judgment might 
with some plea be pardoned if it ran riot, and a little wan- 
tonized : but even in the describing of real and every-day life, 
that which is before their eyes, one of these lesser wits shall 
more deviate from nature — show more of that inconsequence, 

20 which has a natural alliance with frenzy, — than a great genius 
in his " maddest fits," as Withers somewhere calls them. We 
appeal to any one that is acquainted with the common run of 
Lane's novels, — as they existed some twenty or thirty years 
back, — those scanty intellectual viands of the whole female 

25 reading public, till a happier genius arose, and expelled for 
ever the innutritions phantoms, — whether he has not found 
his brain more " betossed," his memory more puzzled, his sense 
of when and where more confounded, among the improbable 
events, the incoherent incidents, the inconsistent characters, 

30 or no characters, of some third-rate love intrigue — where the 
persons shall be a Lord Glendamour and a Miss Rivers, and the 
scene onlv alternate between Bath and Bond Street — a more 
bewildering dreaminess induced upon him, than he has felt 
wandering over all the fairy grounds of Spenser. In the 



SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS 219 

productions we refer to, nothing but names and places is famil- 
iar; the persons are neither of this world nor of any other con- 
ceivable one ; an endless string of activities without purpose, 
of purposes destitute of motive : — we meet phantoms in our 
known walks ; fantasques only christened. In the poet we 5 
have names which announce fiction ; and we have absolutely 
no place at all, for the things and persons of the Faerie Queene 
prate not of their "whereabout." But in their inner nature, 
and the law of their speech and actions, we are at home and 
upon acquainted ground. The one turns hfe into a dream; 10 
the other to the wildest dreams gives the sobrieties of every- 
day occurrences. By what subtile art of tracing the mental 
processes it is effected, we are not philosophers enough to 
explain, but in that wonderful episode of the cave of Mammon, 
in which the Money God appears first in the lowest form of a 15 
miser, is then a worker of metals, and becomes the god of all 
the treasures of the world ; and has a daughter. Ambition, 
before whom all the world kneels for favours — with the 
Hesperian fruit, the waters of Tantalus, with Pilate washing 
his hands vainly, but not impertinently, in the same stream — 20 
that we should be at one moment in the cave of an old 
hoarder of treasures, at the next at the forge of the Cyclops, 
in a palace and yet in hell, all at once, with the shifting 
mutations of the most rambling dream, and our judgment yet 
all the time awake, and neither able nor willing to detect the 25 
fallacy, — is a proof of that hidden sanity which still guides 
the poet in his wildest seeming-aberrations. 

It is not enough to say that the whole episode is a copy of the 
mind's conceptions in sleep; it is, in some sort — -but what a 
copy ! Let the most romantic of us, that has been entertained 30 
all night with the spectacle of some wild and magnificent 
vision, recombine it in the morning, and try it by his waking 
judgment. That which appeared so shifting, and yet so coher- 
ent, while that faculty was passive, when it comes under cool 



220 TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON 

examination, shall appear so reasonless and so unlinked, that 
we are ashamed to have been so deluded ; and to have taken, 
though but in sleep, a monster for a god. But the transitions 
in this episode are every whit as violent as in the most extrava- 
5 gant dream, and yet the waking judgment ratifies them. 



XXXI. TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON 

JoYOUSEST of once embodied spirits, whither at length hast 
thou flown? to what genial region are we permitted to con- 
jecture that thou hast flitted? 

Art thou sowing thy wild oats yet (the harvest time was 
10 still to come with thee) upon casual sands of Avernus? or art 
thou enacting Rover (as we would gladlier think) by wander- 
ing Elysian streams? 

This mortal frame, while thou didst play thy brief antics 
amongst us, was in truth anything but a prison to thee, as 
15 the vain Platonist dreams of this body to be no better than a 
county gaol, forsooth, or some house of durance vile, whereof 
the five senses are the fetters. Thou knewest better than to 
be in a hurry to cast off those gyves ; and hadst notice to quit, 
I fear, before thou wert quite ready to abandon this fleshy 
20 tenement. It was thy Pleasure House, thy Palace of Dainty 
Devices ; thy Louvre, or thy White Hall. 

What new mysterious lodgings dost thou tenant now? or 
when may we expect thy aerial house-warming? 

Tartarus we know, and we have read of the Blessed Shades ; 
25 now cannot I intelligibly fancy thee in either. 

Is it too much to hazard a conjecture, that (as the school- 
men admitted a receptacle apart for Patriarchs and un-chrisom 
Babes) there may exist — not far perchance from that storehouse 
of all vanities, which Milton saw in visions — a Limbo some- 
30 where for Players? and that 



TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON 221 

Up thither like aerial vapours fly 

Both all Stage things, and all that in Stage things 

Built their fond hopes of glory, or lasting fame ? 

All the unaccomplish'd works of Authors' hands, 

Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mix'd, 5 

Damn'd upon earth, fleet thither — 

Play, Opera, Farce, with all their trumpery. — 

There, by the neighbouring moon (by some not improperly 
supposed thy Regent Planet upon earth) mayst thou not still 
be acting thy managerial pranks, great disembodied Lessee? lo 
but Lessee still, and still a Manager. 

In Green Rooms, impervious to mortal eye, the muse beholds 
thee wielding posthumous empire. 

Thin ghosts of Figurantes (never plump on earth) circle thee 
in endlessly, and still their song is Fie on sinful Phantasy. 15 

Magnificent were thy capriccios on this globe of earth, 
Robert William Elliston ! for as yet we know not thy new 
name in heaven. 

It irks me to think, that, stripped of thy regalities, thou 
shouldst ferry over, a poor forked shade, in crazy Stygian 20 
wherry. Methinks I hear the old boatman, paddling by the 
weedy wharf, with raucid voice, bawling, " Sculls, Sculls : " 
to which, with waving hand, and majestic action, thou deign- 
est no reply, other than in two curt monosyllables, " No : 
Oars." . 25 

But the laws of Pluto's kingdom know small difference 
between king, and cobbler; manager, and call-boy; and, if 
haply your dates of life were conterminant, you are quietly tak- 
ing your passage, cheek by cheek (O ignoble levelling of Death) 
with the shade of some recently departed candle-snuffer. 30 

But mercy ! what strippings, what tearing off of histrionic 
robes, and private vanities ! what denudations to the bone, 
before the surly Ferryman will admit you to set a foot within 
his battered lighter i 



22 2 TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON 

Crowns, sceptres ; shield, sword, and truncheon ; thy own 
coronation robes (for thou hast brought the whole property 
man's wardrobe with thee, enough to sink a navy) ; the judge's 
ermine ; the coxcomb's wig ; the snuff-box a la Foppington 
5 — all must overboard, he positively swears — and that ancient 
mariner brooks no denial ; for, since the tiresome monodrame 
of the old Thracian Harper, Charon, it is to be believed, hath 
shown small taste for theatricals. 

Ay, now 'tis done. You are just boat weight ; pura et puta 
10 anima. 

But bless me, how little you look. 

So shall we all look — kings, and kaisers — stripped for the 
last voyage. 

But the murky rogue pushes off. Adieu, pleasant, and 
1 5 thrice pleasant shade ! with . my parting thanks for many a 
heavy hour of life lightened by thy harmless extravaganzas, 
public or domestic. 

Rhadamanthus, who tries the lighter causes below, leaving to 

his two brethren the heavy calendars — honest Rhadamanth, 

2o always partial to players, weighing their parti-coloured existence 

here upon earth, — making account of the few foibles, that may 

have shaded thy real life, as we call it (though, substantially, 

scarcely less a vapour than thy idlest vagaries upon the boards 

of Drury), as but of so many echoes, natural repercussions, 

25 and results to be expected from the assumed extravagancies 

of thy secondary or mock life, nightly upon a stage — after a 

lenient castigation, with rods Hghter than of those Medusean 

ringlets, but just enough to " whip the offending Adam out of 

thee" — shall courteously dismiss thee at the right-hand gate 

30 — the o. p. side of Hades — that conducts to masques, and 

merry-makings, in the Theatre Royal of Proserpine. 

PLAUDITO, ET VALETO. 

Thy friend upon earth, 
Though thou didst connive at his d n. 

MR. H. 



ELLISTONIANA 223 



XXXII. ELLISTONIANA 



My acquaintance with the pleasant creature, whose loss we 
all deplore, was but slight. 

My first introduction to E., which afterwards ripened into 
an acquaintance a little on this side of intimacy, was over a 
counter of the Leamington Spa Library, then newly entered 5 
upon by a branch of his family, E,, whom nothing misbecame 
— to auspicate, I suppose, the filial concern, and set it a-going 
with a lustre — ^was serving in person two damsels fair, who had 
come into the shop ostensibly to inquire for some new publi- 
cation, but in reality to have a sight of the illustrious shopman, 10 
hoping some conference. With what an air did he reach down 
the volume, dispassionately giving his opinion upon the worth 
of the work in question, and launching out into a dissertation 
on its comparative merits with those of certain publications of 
a similar stamp, its rivals ! his enchanted customers fairly hang- 15 
ing on his lips, subdued to their authoritative sentence. So 
have I seen a gentleman in comedy actifig the shopman. So 
Lovelace sold his gloves in King Street. I admired the his- 
trionic art, by which he contrived to carry clean away every 
notion of disgrace, from the occupation he had so generously 20 
submitted to ; and from that hour I judged him, with no after 
repentance, to be a person, with whom it would be a felicity 
to be more acquainted. 

To descant upon his merits as a Comedian would be super- 
fluous. With his blended private and professional habits alone 25 
I have to do ; that harmonious fusion of the manners of the 
player into those of every-day life, which brought the stage 
boards into streets, and dining-parlours, and kept up the play 
when the play was ended. — "I like Wrench," a friend was 
saying to him one day, " because he is the same natural, easy 30 
creature, on the stage that he is ^" "My case exactly," 



224 ELLISTONIANA 

retorted Elliston — with a charming forge tfulness, that the con- 
verse of a proposition does not always lead to the same conclu- 
sion — "I am the same person off the stage that I am on."" 
The inference, at first sight, seems identical; but examine ii 

5 a little, and it confesses only, that the one performer was never, 
and the other always, acting. 

And in truth this was the charm of Elliston's private deport- 
ment. You had a spirited performance always going on before 
your eyes, with nothing to pay. As where a monarch takes 

lo up his casual abode for a night, the poorest hovel which he 
honours by his sleeping in it, becomes ipso facto for that time a 
palace ; so wherever Elliston walked, sate, or stood still, there 
was the theatre. He carried about with him his pit, boxes, 
and galleries, and set up his portable playhouse at corners of 

15 streets, and in the market-places. Upon flintiest pavements 
he trod the boards still ; and if his theme chanced to be pas- 
sionate, the green baize carpet of tragedy spontaneously rose 
beneath his feet. Now this was hearty, and showed a love for 
his art. So Apelles always painted — in thought. So G. D. 

20 always poetises. I hate a lukewarm artist. I have known 
actors — and some of them of Elliston's own stamp — who 
shall have agreeably been amusing you in the part of a rake 
or a coxcomb, through the two or three hours of their dramatic 
existence ; but no sooner does the curtain fall with its leaden 

25 clatter, but a spirit of lead seems to seize on all their faculties. 
They emerge sour, morose persons, intolerable to their families, 
servants, &c. Another shall have been expanding your heart 
with generous deeds and sentiments, till it even beats with 
yearnings of universal sympathy; you absolutely long to go 

30 home, and do some good action. The play seems tedious, till 
you can get fairly out of the house, and realize your laudable 
intentions. At length the final bell rings, and this cordial 
representative of all that is amiable in human breasts steps 
forth — a miser. Elliston was more of a piece. Did he play 



ELLISTONIANA 22$ 

Ranger? and did Ranger fill the general bosom of the town 
with satisfaction? why should he not be Ranger, and diffuse 
the same cordial satisfaction among his private circles? with 
his temperament, his animal spirits, his good nature, his follies 
perchance, could he do better than identify himself with his 5 
impersonation? Are we to like a pleasant rake, or coxcomb, 
on the stage, and give ourselves airs of aversion for the iden- 
tical character presented to us in actual life ? or what would the 
performer have gained by divesting himself of the impersona- 
tion? Could the man Elliston have been essentially different lo 
from his part, even if he had avoided to reflect to us studiously, 
in private circles, the airy briskness, the forwardness, and 
scapegoat trickeries of his prototype? 

*' But there is something not natural in this everlasting 
acting ; we want the real man." 15 

Are you quite sure that it is not the man himself, whom 
you cannot, or will not see, under some adventitious trappings, 
which, nevertheless, sit not at all inconsistently upon him. 
What if it is the nature of some men to be highly artificial ? 
The fault is least reprehensible in players. Gibber was his 20 
own Foppington, with almost as much wit as Vanbrugh could 
add to it. 

" My conceit of his person," — it is Ben Jonson speaking of 
Lord Bacon, — " was never increased towards him by his place 
or honours. But I have, and do reverence him for the great- 25 
ness, that was only proper to himself ; in that he seemed to me 
ever one of the greatest men, that had been in many ages. 
In his adversity I ever prayed that heaven would give him 
strength; for greatness he could not want." 

The quality here commended was scarcely less conspicuous 30 
in the subject of these idle reminiscences, than in my Lord 
Verulam. Those who have imagined that an unexpected 
elevation to the direction of a great London Theatre, affected 
the consequence of Elliston, or at all changed his nature, 



226 ELLISTONIANA 

knew not the essential greatness of the man whom they dispar- 
age. It was my fortune to encounter him near St. Dunstan's 
Church (which, with its punctual giants, is now no more than 
dust and a shadow), on the morning of his election to that 
5 high office. Grasping my hand with a look of significance, 
he only uttered, — " Have you heard the news? " — then with 
another look following up the blow, he subjoined, " I am the 
future Manager of Drury Lane Theatre." — Breathless as he 
saw me, he stayed not for congratulation or reply, but mutely 

10 stalked away, leaving me to chew upon his new-blown dignities 
at leisure. In fact, nothing could be said to it. Expressive 
silence alone could muse his praise. This was in his great 
style. 

But was he less great (be witness, O ye Powers of Equa- 

15 nimity, that supported in the ruins of Carthage the consular 
exile, and more recently transmuted for a more illustrious 
exile, the barren constableship of Elba into an image of 
Imperial France), when, in melancholy after years, again, 
much nearer the same spot, I met him, when that sceptre had 

20 been wrested from his hand, and his dominion was curtailed 
to the petty managership, and part proprietorship, of the 
small Olympic, his Elba? He. still played nightly upon the 
boards of Drury, but in parts, alas ! allotted to him, not 
magnificently distributed by him. Waiving his great loss as 

25 nothing, and magnificently sinking the sense of fallen material 
grandeur in the more liberal resentment of depreciations done 
to his more lofty intellectual pretensions, " Have you heard " 
(his customary exordium) — " have you heard," said he, " how 
they treat me? they put me in comedy.''^ Thought I — but his 

30 finger on his lips forbade any verbal interruption — " Where 
could they have put you better?" Then, after a pause — 
"Where I formerly played Romeo, I now play Mercutio," — 
and so again he stalked away, neither staying, nor caring for, 
responses. 



ELLISTONIANA 22/ 

O, it was a rich scene, — but Sir A C , the best of 

story-tellers and surgeons, who mends a lame narrative almost 
as well as he sets a fracture, alone could do justice to it — 
that I was witness to, in the tarnished room (that had once 
been green) of that same little Olympic. There, after his 5 
deposition from Imperial Drury, he substituted a throne. 
That Olympic Hill was his "highest heaven "; himself *' Jove 
in his chair." There he sat in state, while before him, on 
complaint of prompter, was brought for judgment — how shall 
I describe her? — one of those little tawdry things that flirt at lo 
the tails of choruses — a probationer for the town, in either of 
of its senses — the pertest little drab — a dirty fringe and 
appendage of the lamps' smoke — who, it seems, on some 
disapprobation expressed by a "highly respectable" audience, 
had precipitately quitted her station on the boards, and 15 
withdrawn her small talents in disgust. 

"And how dare you," said her Manager — assuming a 
sensorial severity which would have crushed the confidence 
of a Vestris, and disarmed that beautiful Rebel herself of 
her professional caprices — I verily believe, he thought her 20 
standing before him — " how dare you, madam, withdraw 
yourself, without a notice, from your theatrical duties?" "I 
was hissed, sir." " And you have the presumption to decide 
upon the taste of the town? " "I don't know that, sir, but I 
will never stand to be hissed," was the subjoinder of young 25 
Confidence — when gathering up his features into one signifi- 
cant mass of wonder, pity, and expostulatory indignation — in 
a lesson never to have been lost upon a creature less forward 
than she who stood before him — his words were these : 
"They have hissed me^ 30 

'Twas the identical argument, a fortiori^ which the son of 
Peleus uses to Lycaon trembling under his lance, to persuade 
him to take his destiny with a good grace. " I too am 
mortal." And it is to be believed that in both cases the 



228 ELLISTONIANA 

rhetoric missed of its application, for want of a proper 

understanding with the faculties of the respective recipients. 

" Quite an Opera pit," he said to me, as he was courteously 

conducting me over the benches of his Surrey Theatre, the 

5 last retreat, and recess, of his every-day waning grandeur. 

Those who knew Elliston, will know the nia?iner in which 

he pronounced the latter sentence of the few words I am 

about to record. One proud day to me he took his roast 

mutton with us in the Temple, to which I had superadded 

10 a preliminary haddock. After a rather plentiful partaking 
of the meagre banquet, not unrefreshed with the humbler 
sort of liquors, I made a sort of apology for the humility 
of the fare, observing that for my own part I never ate but 
of one dish at dinner. " I too never eat but one thing at 

15 dinner" — was his reply — then after a pause — "reckoning 
fish as nothing." The manner was all. It was as if by one 
peremptory sentence he had decreed the annihilation of all the 
savory esculents, which the pleasant and nutritious food-giving 
Ocean pours forth upon poor humans from her watery bosom. 

20 This was greatness, tempered with considerate tenderness to the 
feelings of his scanty but welcoming entertainer. 

Great wert thou in thy life, Robert William Elliston ! and not 
lessened in thy death, if report speak truly, which says that 
thou didst direct that thy mortal remains should repose under 

25 no inscription but one of pure Latinity. Classical was thy 
bringing up ! and beautiful was the feeling on thy last bed, 
which, connecting the man with the boy, took thee back in 
thy latest exercise of imagination, to the days when, undream- 
ing of Theatres and Managerships, thou wert a scholar, and 

30 an early ripe one, under the roofs builded by the munificent 
and pious Colet. For thee the Pauline Muses weep. In 
elegies, that shall silence this crude prose, they shall celebrate 
thy praise. 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO 229 



XXXIII. NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO 

Dan Stuart once told us, that he did not remember that 
he ever dehberately walked into the Exhibition at Somerset 
House in his life. He might occasionally have escorted a 
party of ladies across the way that were going in ; but he 
hever went in of his own head. Yet the office of the Morning 5 
JPost newspaper stood then just where it does now — we are 
carrying you back, Reader, some thirty years or more — with 
its gilt-globe-topped front facing that emporium of our artists' 
grand Annual Exposure. We sometimes wish that we had 
observed the same abstinence with Daniel. 10 

A word or two of D. S. He ever appeared to us one of the 
finest-tempered of Editors. Perry, of the Morning Chronicle, . 
was equally pleasant, with a dash, no slight one either, of the 
courtier. S. was frank, plain, and English all over. We have 
worked for both these gentlemen. 15 

It is soothing to contemplate the head of the Ganges ; to 
trace the first little bubblings of a mighty river; 



With holy reverence to approach the rocks, 
Whence glide the streams renown'd in ancient song. 

Fired with a perusal of the Abyssinian Pilgrim's exploratory 20 
rambhngs after the cradle of the infant Nilus, we well remember 
on one fine summer holiday (a " whole day's leave " we called 
it at Christ's Hospital) sallying forth at rise of sun, not very 
well provisioned either for such an undertaking, to trace the 
current of the New River — Middletonian stream ! — to its 25 
scaturient source, as we had read, in meadows by fair Amwell. 
Gallantly did we commence our solitary quest — for it was 
essential to the dignity of a Discovery, that no eye of school- 
boy save our own, should beam on the detection. By flowery 
spots, and verdant lanes, skirting Hornsey, Hope trained us 30 



230 NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO 

on in many a baffling turn ; endless, hopeless meanders, as it 
seemed ; or as if the jealous waters had dodged us, reluctant 
to have the humble spot of their nativity revealed ; till spent, 
and nigh famished, before set of the same sun, we sat down 
5 somewhere by Bowes Farm, near Tottenham, with a tithe of 
•our proposed labours only yet accomplished ; sorely con- 
vinced in spirit, that the Brucian enterprise was as yet too 
arduous for our young shoulders. 

Not more refreshing to the thirsty curiosity of the traveller is 

10 the tracing of some mighty waters up to their shallow fontlet, 
than it is to a pleased and candid reader to go back to the inex- 
perienced essays, the first callow flights in authorship, of some 
established name in literature ; from the Gnat which preluded 
to the yEneid, to the Duck which Samuel Johnson trod on. 

15 In those days every Morning Paper, as an essential retainer 
to its establishment, kept an author, who was bound to furnish 
daily a quantum of witty paragraphs. Sixpence a joke — and 
it was thought pretty high too — was Dan Stuart's settled 
remuneration in these cases. The chat of the day, scandal, 

20 but above all, dress, furnished the material. The length of no 
paragraph was to exceed seven lines. Shorter they might be, 
but they must be poignant. 

A fashion oi flesh, or rather //;i^y^-coloured hose for the 
ladies, luckily coming up at the juncture, when we were in 

25 our probation for the place of Chief Jester to S.'s Paper, 
estabHshed our reputation in that line. We were pronounced 
a " capital hand." O the conceits which we varied upon red 
in all its prismatic differences ! from the trite and obvious 
flower of Cytherea, to the flaming costume of the lady that 

30 has her sitting upon "many waters." Then there was the 
collateral topic of ankles. What an occasion to a truly chaste 
writer, like ourself, of touching that nice brink, and never yet 
tumbling over it, of a seemingly ever approximating something 
"not quite proper"; while, like a skilful posture-master, 



I 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO 23 I 

balancing betwixt decorums and their opposites, he keeps the 
line, from which a hair's-breadth deviation is destruction; 
hovering in the confines of light and darkness, or where " both 
seem either"; a hazy uncertain delicacy; Autolycus-like in 
the Play, still putting off his expectant auditory with " Whoop, 5 
do me no harm, good man ! " But, above all, that conceit 
arrided us most at that time, and still tickles our midriff to 
remember, where, allusively to the flight of Astraea — tiUima 
Ccelestum terras reliquit — we pronounced — in reference to 
the stockings still — that Modesty taking her final leave of 10 

MORTALS, HER LAST BlUSH WAS VISIBLE IN HER ASCENT TO THE 
HEAVENS BY THE TRACT OF THE GLOWING INSTEP. TMs might 

be called the crowning conceit ; and was esteemed tolerable 
writing in those days. 

But the fashion of jokes, with all other things, passes away ; 15 
as did the transient mode which had so favoured us. The 
ankles of our fair friends in a few weeks began to reassume 
their whiteness, and left us scarce a leg to stand upon. Other 
female whims followed, but none, methought, so pregnant, so 
invitatory of shrewd conceits, and more than single meanings. 20 

Somebody has said, that to swallow six cross-buns daily con- 
secutively for a fortnight would surfeit the stoutest digestion. 
But to have to furnish as many jokes daily, and that not for a 
fortnight, but for a long twelvemonth, as we were constrained 
to do, was a httle harder execution. " Man goeth forth to his 25 
work until the evening" — from a reasonable hour in the 
morning, we presume it was meant. Now as our main occupa- 
tion took us up from eight till five every day in the City ; and 
as our evening hours, at that time of Hfe, had generally to do 
with anything rather than business, it follows, that the only 30 
time we could spare for this manufactory of jokes — our sup- 
plementary livelihood, that suppUed us in every want beyond 
mere bread and cheese — was exactly that part of the day 
which (as we have heard of No Man's Land) may be fitly 



232 NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO 

denominated No Man's Time ; that is, no time in which a 
man ought to be up and awake in. To speak more plainly, 
it is that time, of an hour, or an hour and a half s duration, in 
which a man, whose occasions call him up so preposterously, 
5 has to wait for his breakfast. 

O those headaches at dawn of day, when at five, or half- 
past five in summer, and not much later in the dark seasons, 
we were compelled to rise, having been perhaps not above 
four hours in bed — (for we were no go-to-beds with the lamb, 

lo though we anticipated the lark ofttimes in her rising — we 
liked a parting cup at midnight, as all young men did before 
these effeminate times, and to have our friends about us — we 
were not constellated under Aquarius, that watery sign, and 
therefore incapable of Bacchus, cold, washy, bloodless — we 

15 were none of your Basilian water-sponges, nor had taken our 
degrees at Mount Ague — we were right toping Capulets, jolly 
companions, we and they) — but to have to get up, as we have 
said before, curtailed of half our fair sleep, fasting, with only a 
dim vista of refreshing Bohea in the distance — to be necessi- 

20 tated to rouse ourselves at the detestable rap of an old hag of 
a domestic, who seemed to take a diabolical pleasure in her 
announcement that it was " time to rise ; " and whose chappy 
knuckles we have often yearned to amputate, and string them 
up at our chamber door, to be a terror to all such unseasonable 

25 rest-breakers in future 

" Facil " and sweet, as Virgil sings, had been the " descend- 
ing" of the over-night, balmy the first sinking of the heavy 
head upon the pillow ; but to get up, as he goes on to say, 

— revocare gradus, superasque evadere ad auras — 

30 and to get up moreover to make jokes with malice prepended 
— there was the " labour," — there the " work." 

No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a slavery like to that, 
our slavery. No fractious operants ever turned out for half 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO 233 

the tyranny, which this necessity exercised upon us. Half-a- 
dozen jests in a day (bating Sundays too), why it seems 
nothing ! We make twice the number every day in our Hves 
as a matter of course, and claim no Sabbatical exemptions. 
But then they come into our head. But when the head has to 5 
go out to them — when the mountain must go to Mahomet — 

Reader, try it for once, only for one short twelvemonth. 

It was not every week that a fashion of pink stockings came 
up ; but mostly, instead of it, some rugged, untractable sub- 
ject ; some topic impossible to be contorted into the risible ; 10 
some feature, upon which no smile could play; some flint, 
from which no process of ingenuity could procure a distilla- 
tion. There they lay; there your appointed tale of brick- 
making was set before you, which you must finish, with or 
without straw, as it happened. The craving dragon — the 15 
Public — like him in Bel's temple- — must be fed; it expected, 
its daily rations ; and Daniel, and ourselves, to do us justice, 
did the best we could on this side bursting him. 

While we were wringing out coy sprightlinesses for the Post, 
and writhing under the toil of what is called "easy writing," 20 
Bob Allen, our qtcondam schoolfellow, was tapping his imprac- 
ticable brains in a like service for the Oracle. Not that Rob- 
ert troubled himself much about wit. If his paragraphs had 
a sprightly air about them, it was sufficient. He carried this 
nonchalance so far at last, that a matter of intelligence, and 25 
that no very important one, was not seldom palmed upon his 
employers for a good jest ; for example sake — " Walking yes- 
terday morning casually do7vn Snow Hill, who should we meet 
but Mr. Deputy Humphreys I we rejoice to add, that the worthy 
Deputy appeared to enjoy a good state of health. We do not 30 
remember ever to have seen him look better.^'' This gentleman, 
so surprisingly met upon Snow Hill, from some peculiarities 
in gait or gesture, was a constant butt for mirth to the small 
paragraph-mongers of the day; and our friend thought that 



234 NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO 

he might have his fling at him with the rest. We met A. in 
Holborn shortly after this extraordinary rencounter, which he 
told with tears of satisfaction in his eyes, and chuckling at the 
anticipated effects of its announcement next day in the paper. 
5 We did not quite comprehend where the wit of it lay at the 
time ; nor was it easy to be detected, when the thing came 
out, advantaged by type and letter-press. He had better have 
met anything that morning than a Common Councilman. His 
services were shortly after dispensed with, on the plea that his 

10 paragraphs of late had been deficient in point. The one in 
question, it must be owned, had an air, in the opening espe- 
cially, proper to awaken curiosity; and the sentiment, or moral, 
wears the aspect of humanity, and good neighbourly feeling. 
But somehow the conclusion was not judged altogether to 

15 answer to the magnificent promise of the premises. We 
traced our friend's pen afterwards in the True Briton, the 
Star, the Traveller, — from all of which he was successively 
dismissed, the Proprietors having " no further occasion for his 
services." Nothing was easier than to detect him. When wit 

20 failed, or topics ran low, there constantly appeared the follow- 
ing — "// is not generally known that the three Blue Balls 
at the Pawnbrokers' shops are the ancient arms of Lombardy. 
The Lombards were the first money-brokers in Europe,^'' Bob 
has done more to set the pubhc right on this important point 

25 of blazonry, than the whole College of Heralds. 

The appointment of a regular wit has long ceased to be a 
part of the economy of a Morning Paper. Editors find their 
own jokes, or do as well without them. Parson Este, and Top- 
ham, brought up the set custom of "witty paragraphs" first 

30 in the World. Boaden was a reigning paragraphist in his day, 
and succeeded poor Allen in the Oracle. But, as we said, the 
fashion of jokes passes away ; and it would be difficult to dis- 
cover in the Biographer of Mrs. Siddons, any traces of that 
vivacity and fancy which charmed the whole town at the 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO 235 

commencement of the present century. Even the prelusive 
delicacies of the present writer — the curt " Astraean allusion " 

— would be thought pedantic, and out of date, in these days. 
From the office of the Morniftg Post (for we may as well 

exhaust our Newspaper Reminiscences at once) by change of S 
property in the paper, we were transferred, mortifying exchange ! 
to the office of the Albion Newspaper, late Rackstrow's Museum, 
in Fleet Street. What a transition — from a handsome apart- 
ment, from rose-wood desks, and silver inkstands, to an office 

— no office, but a den rather, but just redeemed from the occu- 10 
pation of dead monsters, of which it seemed redolent — from 
the centre of loyalty and fashion, to a focus of vulgarity and 
sedition ! Here in murky closet, inadequate from its square 
contents to the receipt of the two bodies of Editor, and humble 
paragraph-maker, together at one time, sat in the discharge of 15 
his new Editorial functions (the "Bigod" of Elia) the redoubted 
John Fenwick. 

F., without a guinea in his pocket, and having left not 
many in the pockets of his friends whom he might command, 
had purchased (on tick doubtless) the whole and sole Editor- 20 
ship. Proprietorship, with all the rights and titles (such as they 
were worth) of the Albion, from one Lovell ; of whom we know 
nothing, save that he had stood in the pillory for a libel on 
the Prince of Wales. With this hopeless concern — for it had 
been sinking ever since its commencement, and could now 25 
reckon upon not more than a hundred subscribers — F. reso- 
lutely determined upon pulling down the Government in the 
first instance, and making both our fortunes by way of corollary. 
For seven weeks and more did this infatuated Democrat go 
about borrowing seven-shilling pieces, and lesser coin, to meet 30 
the daily demands of the Stamp Office, which allowed no credit 
to publications of that side in politics. An outcast from politer 
bread, we attached our small talents to. the forlorn fortunes of 
our friend. Our occupation now was to write treason. 



236 NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO 

Recollections of feelings — which were all that now remained 
from our first boyish heats kindled by the French Revolution, 
when if we were misled, we erred in the company of some, who 
are accounted very good men now — rather than any tendency 
5 at this time to Republican doctrines — assisted us in assuming 
a style of writing, while the paper lasted, consonant in no very 
undertone to the right earnest fanaticism of F. Our cue was 
now to insinuate, rather than recommend, possible abdications. 
Blocks, axes, Whitehall tribunals, were covered with flowers of 

10 so cunning a periphrasis — as Mr. Bayes says, never naming the 
thing directly — that the keen eye of an Attorney-General was 
insufficient to detect the lurking snake among them. There 
were times, indeed, when we sighed for our more gentleman- 
like occupation under Stuart. But with change of masters it 

15 is ever change of service. Already one paragraph, and another, 
as we learned afterwards from a gentleman at the Treasury, had 
begun to be marked at that office, with a view of its being sub- 
mitted at least to the attention of the proper Law Officers — 
when an unlucky, or rather lucky epigram from our pen, aimed 

20 at Sir J s M -h, who was on the eve of departing for 

India to reap the fruits of his apostasy, as F. pronounced it (it 
is hardly worth particularizing), happening to offend the nice 
sense of Lord, or, as he then delighted to be called, Citizen 
Stanhope, deprived F. at once of the last hopes of a guinea 

25 from the last patron that had stuck by us ; and breaking up 
our estabHshment, left us to the safe, but somewhat mortifying, 
neglect of the Crown Lawyers. — It was about this time, or a 
little earher, that Dan Stuart made that curious confession to 
us, that he had " never deliberately walked into an Exhibition 

30 at Somerset House in his life." 



CRITICAL ESSAYS 



XXXIV. ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 

CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR FITNESS FOR 
STAGE REPRESENTATION 

Taking a turn the other day in the Abbey, I was struck 
with the affected attitude of a figure, which I do not remember 
to have seen before, and which upon examination proved to 
be a whole-length of the celebrated Mr. Garrick. Though I 
would not go so far with some good Catholics abroad as to 5 
shut players altogether out of consecrated ground, yet I own I 
was not a little scandalized at the introduction of theatrical airs 
and gestures into a place set apart to remind us of the saddest 
reahties. Going nearer, I found inscribed under this harlequin 
figure the following lines : — 10 

To paint fair Nature, by divine command, 
Her magic pencil in his glowing hand, 
A Shakespeare rose ; then, to expand his fame 
Wide o'er this breathing world, a Garrick came. 
Though sunk in death the forms the Poet drew, 15 

The Actor's genius made them breathe anew ; 
Though, like the bard himself, in night they lay, 
Immortal Garrick call'd them back to day : 
And till Eternity with power sublime 

Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary Time, 20 

Shakespeare and Garrick like twin-stars shall shine, 
And earth irradiate with a beam divine. 

237 



238 ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 

It would be an insult to my readers' understandings to 
attempt any thing like a criticism on this farrago of false 
thoughts and nonsense. But the reflection it led me into was 
a kind of wonder, how from the days of the actor here cele- 
5 brated to our own, it should have been the fashion to compli- 
ment every performer in his turn, that has had the luck to 
please the town in any of the great characters of Shakespeare, 
with the notion of possessing a mind congenial with the poefs: 
how people should come thus unaccountably to confound the 

10 power of originating poetical images and conceptions with the 
faculty of being able to read or recite the same when put into 
words ; ^ or what connexion that absolute mastery over the 
heart and soul of man, which a great dramatic poet possesses, 
has with those low tricks upon the eye and ear, which a 

1 5 player by observing a few general effects, which some common 
passion, as grief, anger, &c., usually has upon the gestures and 
exterior, can so easily compass. To know the internal work- 
ings and movements of a great mind, of an Othello or a 
Hamlet for instance, the when and the why and the how far 

20 they should be moved ; to what pitch a passion is becoming ; 
to give the reins and to pull in the curb exactly at the moment 
when the drawing in or the slacking is most graceful ; seems 
to demand a reach of intellect of a vastly different extent from 
that which is employed upon the bare imitation of the signs 

25 of these passions in the countenance or gesture, which signs 
are usually observed to be most lively and emphatic in the 
weaker sort of minds, and which signs can after all but indicate 

1 It is observable that we fall into this confusion only in dramatic 
recitations. We never dream that the gentleman who reads Lucretius 
in public with great applause, is therefore a great poet and philosopher ; 
nor do we find that Tom Davies, the bookseller, who is recorded to 
have recited the Paradise Lost better than any man in England in his 
day (though I cannot help thinking there must be some mistake in this 
' tradition) was therefore, by his intimate friends, set upon a level with 
Milton. 



ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 239 

some passion, as I said before, anger, or grief, generally ; but of 
the motives and grounds of the passion, wherein it differs from 
the same passion in low and vulgar natures, of these the actor 
can give no more idea by his face or gesture than the eye 
(without a metaphor) can speak, or the muscles utter intelli- 5 
gible sounds. But such is the instantaneous nature of the 
impressions which we take in at the eye and ear at a playhouse, 
compared with the slow apprehension oftentimes of the under- 
standing in reading, that we are apt not only to sink the play- 
writer in the consideration which we pay to the actor, but even 10 
to identify in our minds in a perverse manner, the actor with 
the character which he represents. It is difficult for a frequent 
play-goer to disembarrass the idea of Hamlet from the person 
and voice of Mr. K. We speak of Lady Macbeth, while we 
are in reality thinking of Mrs. S. Nor is this confusion inci- 15 
dental alone to unlettered persons, who, not possessing the 
advantage of reading, are necessarily dependent upon the stage- 
player for all the pleasure which they can receive from the 
drama, and to whom the very idea of what an author is cannot 
be made comprehensible without some pain and perplexity of 20 
mind : the error is one from which persons otherwise not meanly 
lettered, find it almost impossible to extricate themselves. 

Never let me be so ungrateful as to forget the very high 
degree of satisfaction which I received some years back from 
seeing for the first time a tragedy of Shakespeare performed, 25 
in which those two great performers sustained the principal 
parts. It seemed to embody and realize conceptions which 
had hitherto assumed no distinct shape. But dearly do we 
pay all our life after for this juvenile pleasure, this sense of 
distinctness. When the novelty is past, we find to our cost 30 
that, instead of realizing an idea, we have only materialized 
and brought down a fine vision to the standard of flesh and 
blood. We have let go a dream, in quest of an unattainable 
substance. 



240 ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 

How cruelly this operates upon the mind, to have its free 
conceptions thus cramped and pressed down to the measure 
of a strait-lacing actuality, may be judged from that delightful 
sensation of freshness, with which we turn to those plays of 

5 Shakespeare which have escaped being performed, and to those 
passages in the acting plays of the same writer which have 
happily been left out in the performance. How far the very 
custom of hearing anything spouted^ withers and blows upon a 
fine passage, may be seen in those speeches from Henry the 

lo Fifth, &c., which are current in the mouths of school-boys 
from their being to be found in Enfield Speakers, and such 
kind of books. I confess myself utterly unable to appreciate 
that celebrated soliloquy in Hamlet, beginning *' To be or not 
to be," or to tell whether it be good, bad, or indifferent, it has 

15 been so handled and pawed about by declamatory boys and 
men, and torn so inhumanly from its living place and principle 
of continuity in the play, till it is become to me a perfect dead 
member. 

It may seem a paradox, but I cannot help being of opinion 

20 that the plays of Shakespeare are less calculated for perform- 
ance on a stage, than those of almost any other dramatist 
whatever. Their distinguishing excellence is a reason that 
they should be so. There is so much in them, which comes 
not under the province of acting, with which eye, and tone, 

25 and gesture, have nothing to do. 

The glory of the scenic art is to personate passion, and the 
turns of passion; and the more coarse and palpable the 
passion is, the more hold upon the eyes and ears of the spec- 
tators the performer obviously possesses. For this reason, 

30 scolding scenes, scenes where two persons talk themselves into 
a fit of fury, and then in a surprising manner talk themselves 
out of it again, have always been the most popular upon our 
stage. And the reason is plain, because the spectators are 
here most palpably appealed to, they are the proper judges in 



ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 24 1 . 

this war of words, they are the legitimate ring that should 
be formed romid such "intellectual prize-fighters." Talking is 
the direct object of the imitation here. But in all the best 
dramas, and in Shakespeare above all, how obvious it is, that 
the form of speaking, whether it be in soliloquy or dialogue, is 5 
only a medium, and often a highly artificial one, for putting 
the reader or spectator into possession of that knowledge of 
the inner structure and workings of mind in a character, which 
he could otherwise never have arrived at in that form of com- 
position by any gift short of intuition. We do here as we do 10 
with novels written in the epistolary form. How many impro- 
prieties, perfect solecisms in letter-writing, do we put up with 
in Clarissa and other books, for the sake of the delight which 
that form upon the whole gives us. 

But the practice of stage representation reduces everything 15 
to a controversy of elocution. Every character, from the bois- 
terous blasphemings of Bajazet to the shrinking timidity of 
womanhood, must play the orator. The love-dialogues of 
Romeo and Juliet, those silver-sweet sounds of lovers' tongues 
by night ; the more intimate and sacred sweetness of nuptial 20 
colloquy between an Othello or a Posthumus with their married 
wives, all those delicacies which are so delightful in the reading, 
as when we read of those youthful dalliances in Paradise — 

As beseem'd 

Fair couple link'd in happy nuptial league, 25 

Alone : 

by the inherent fault of stage representation, how are these 
things sullied and turned from their very nature by being 
exposed to a large assembly ; when such speeches as Imogen 
addresses to her lord, come drawling out of the mouth of a 30 
hired actress, whose courtship, though nominally addressed to 
the personated Posthumus, is manifestly aimed at the spectators, 
who are to judge of her endearments and her returns of love. 



242 ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 

The character of Hamlet is perhaps that by which, since the 
days of Betterton, a succession of popular performers have had 
the greatest ambition to distinguish themselves. The length 
of the part may be one of their reasons. But for the character 
5 itself, we find it in a play, and therefore we judge it a fit sub- 
ject of dramatic representation. The play itself abounds in 
maxims and reflexions beyond any other, and therefore we 
consider it as a proper vehicle for conveying moral instruc- 
tion. But Hamlet himself — what does he suffer meanwhile 

10 by being dragged forth as a public schoolmaster, to give lec- 
tures to the crowd ! Why, nine parts in ten of what Hamlet 
does, are transactions between himself and his moral sense, 
they are the effusions of his solitary musing, which he retires 
to holes and corners and the most sequestered parts of the 

1 5 palace to pour forth ; or rather, they are the silent meditations 
with which his bosom is bursting, reduced to words for the 
sake of the reader, who must else remain ignorant of what is 
passing there. These profound sorrows, these hght-and-noise- 
abhorring ruminations, which the tongue scarce dares utter to 

2o deaf walls and chambers, how can they be represented by a 
gesticulating actor, who comes and mouths them out before an 
audience, making four hundred people his confidants at once ? 
I say not that it is the fault of the actor so to do ; he must 
pronounce them ore rotundo, he must accompany them with 

25 his eye, he must insinuate them into his auditory by some 
trick of eye, tone, or gesture, or he fails. He must be thinking 
all the while of his appearance^ because he knows that all the 
while the spectators are judging of it. And this is the way to 
represent the shy, negligent, retiring Hamlet. 

30 It is true that there is no other mode of conveying a vast 
quantity of thought and feeling to a great portion of the 
audience, who otherwise would never learn it for themselves 
by reading, and the intellectual acquisition gained this way 
may, for aught I know, be inestimable \ but I am not arguing 



ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 243 

that Hamlet should not be acted, but how much Hamlet is 
made another thing by being acted. I have heard much of the 
wonders which Garrick performed in this part ; but as I never 
saw him, I must have leave to doubt whether the representa- 
tion of such a character came within the province of his art. 5 
Those who tell me of him, speak of his eye, of the magic of 
his eye, and of his commanding voice : physical properties, 
vastly desirable in an actor, and without which he can never 
insinuate meaning into an auditory, — but what have they to 
do with Hamlet? what have they to do with intellect? In 10 
fact, the things aimed at in theatrical representation, are to 
arrest the spectator's eye upon the form and the gesture, and 
so to gain a more favourable hearing to what is spoken : it is 
not what the character is, but how he looks ; not what he says, 
but how he speaks it. I see no reason to think that if the 15 
play of Hamlet were written over again by some such writer 
as Banks or Lillo, retaining the process of the story, but totally 
omitting all the poetry of it, all the divine features of Shake- 
speare, his stupendous intellect ; and only taking care to give 
us enough of passionate dialogue, which Banks or Lillo were 20 
never at a loss to furnish ; I see not how the effect could be 
much different upon an audience, nor how the actor has it in 
his power to represent Shakespeare to us differently from his 
representation of Banks or Lillo. Hamlet would still be a 
youthful accomplished prince, and must be gracefully per- 25 
sonated ; he might be puzzled in his mind, wavering in his 
conduct, seemingly cruel to Ophelia, he might see a ghost, 
and start at it, and address it kindly when he found it to be 
his father; all this in the poorest and most homely language 
of the servilest creeper after nature that ever consulted the 30 
palate of an audience ; without troubling Shakespeare for 
the matter : and I see not but there would be room for all the 
power which an actor has, to display itself. All the passions 
and changes of passion might remain ; for those are much less 



244 ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 

difficult to write or act than is thought ; it is a trick easy to be 
attained, it is but rising or falhng a note or two in the voice, 
a whisper with a significant foreboding look to announce its 
approach, and so contagious the counterfeit appearance of any 
5 emotion is, that let the words be what they will, the look and 
tone shall carry it off and make it pass for deep skill in the 
passions. 

It is common for people to talk of Shakespeare's plays being 
so natural^ that everybody can understand him. They are 

10 natural indeed, they are grounded deep in nature, so deep 
that the depth of them lies out of the reach of most of us. 
You shall hear the same persons say that George Barnwell is 
very natural, and Othello is very natural, that they are both 
very deep ; and to them they are the same kind of thing. At 

15 the one they sit and shed tears, because a good sort of young 

man is tempted by a naughty woman to commit a trifling 

■peccadillo, the murder of an uncle or so,^ that is all, and so 

comes to an untimely end, which is so moving ; and at the 

other, because a blackamoor in a fit of jealousy kills his inno- 

20 cent white wife : and the odds are that ninety-nine out of a 
hundred would wilHngly behold the same catastrophe happen 
to both the heroes, and have thought the rope more due to 

1 If this note could hope to meet the eye of any of the Managers, I 
would entreat and beg of them, in the name of both the Galleries, that 
this insult upon the morality of the common people of London should 
cease to be eternally repeated in the holiday weeks. Why are the 
'Prentices of this famous and well-governed city, instead of an amuse- 
ment, to be treated over and over again with a nauseous sermon of 
George Barnwell ? Why at the end of their vistoes are we to place the 
gallows ? Were I an uncle, I should not much like a nephew of mine 
to have such an example placed before his eyes. It is really making 
uncle-murder too trivial to exhibit it as done upon such slight motives ; 
— it is attributing too much to such characters as Millwood ; it is put- 
ting things into the heads of good young men, which they would never 
otherv^'ise have dreamed of. Uncles that think anything of their lives, 
should fairly petition the Chamberlain against it. 



ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 245 

Othello than to Barnwell. For of the texture of Othello's 
mind, the inward construction marvellously laid open with all 
its strengths and weaknesses, its heroic confidences and its 
human misgivings, its agonies of hate springing from the 
depths of love, they see no more than the spectators at a 5 
cheaper rate, who pay their pennies apiece to look through 
the man's telescope in Leicester Fields, see into the inward 
plot and topography of the moon. Some dim thing or other 
they see, they see an actor personating a passion, of grief, or 
anger, for instance, and they recognize it as a copy of the 10 
usual external effects of such passions ; or at least as being 
true to that symbol of the emotion which passes current at the 
theatre for it, for it is often no more than that : but of the 
grounds of the passion, its correspondence to a great or heroic 
nature, which is the only worthy object of tragedy, — that 15 
common auditors know anything of this, or can have any such 
notions dinned into them by the mere strength of an actor's 
lungs, — that apprehensions foreign to them should be thus 
infused into them by storm, I can neither believe, nor under- 
stand how it can be possible. 20 

We talk of Shakespeare's admirable observation of life, when 
we should feel, that not from a petty inquisition into those 
cheap and every-day characters which surrounded him, as they 
surround us, but from his own mind, which was, to borrow a 
phrase of Ben Jonson's, the very "sphere of humanity," he 25 
fetched those images of virtue and of knowledge, of which 
every one of us recognizing a part, think we comprehend in 
our natures the whole ; and oftentimes mistake the powers 
which he positively creates in us, for nothing more than indige- 
nous faculties of our own minds, which only waited the appli- 30 
cation of corresponding virtues in him to return a full and 
clear echo of the same. 

To return to Hamlet. — Among the distinguishing features 
of that wonderful character, one of the most interesting (yet 



246 ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 

painful) is that soreness of mind which makes him treat the 
intrusions of Polonius with harshness, and that asperity which 
he puts on in his interviews with Opheha. These tokens of 
an unhinged mind (if they be not mixed in the latter case 

5 with a profound artifice of love, to alienate Ophelia by affected 
discourtesies, so to prepare her mind for the breaking off of 
that loving intercourse, which can no longer find a place 
amidst business so serious as that which he has to do) are 
parts of his character, which to reconcile with our admiration 

10 of Hamlet, the most patient consideration of his situation is 
no more than necessary ; they are what ^^ forgive afterwards^ 
and explain by the whole of his character, but at the time they 
are harsh and unpleasant. Yet such is the actor's necessity of 
giving strong blows to the audience, that I have never seen a 

15 player in this character, who did not exaggerate and strain 
to the utmost these ambiguous features, — these temporary 
deformities in the character. They make him express a vulgar 
scorn at Polonius which utterly degrades his gentility, and 
which no explanation can render palatable ; they make him 

20 show contempt, and curl up the nose at Ophelia's father, — 
contempt in its very grossest and most hateful form ; but they 
get applause by it : it is natural, people say ; that is, the words 
are scornful, and the actor expresses scorn, and that they can 
judge of : but why so much scorn, and of that sort, they never 

25 think of asking. 

So to Ophelia. — All the Hamlets that I have ever seen, 
rant and rave at her as if she had committed some great crime, 
and the audience are highly pleased, because the words of the 
part are satirical, and they are enforced by the strongest 

30 expression of satirical indignation of which the face and voice 
are capable. But then, whether Hamlet is likely to have put 
on such brutal appearances to a lady whom he loved so dearly, 
is never thought on. The truth is, that in all such deep affec- 
tions as had subsisted between Hamlet and Ophelia, there is 



ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 247 

a stock of supererogatory love (if I may venture to use the 
expression), which in any great grief of heart, especially where 
that which preys upon the mind cannot be communicated, 
confers a kind of indulgence upon the grieved party to express 
itself, even to its heart's dearest object, in the language of a 5 
temporary alienation ; but it is not alienation, it is a distraction 
purely, and so it always makes itself to be felt by that object : 
it is not anger, but grief assuming the appearance of anger, 
■ — love awkwardly counterfeiting hate, as sweet countenances 
when they try to frown : but such sternness and fierce disgust 10 
as Hamlet is made to show, is no counterfeit, but the real face 
of absolute 'aversion, — of irreconcilable alienation. It may 
be said he puts on the madman ; but then he should only so 
far put on this counterfeit lunacy as his own real distraction 
will give him leave; that is, incompletely, imperfectly; not 15 
in that confirmed, practised way, like a master of his art, or 
as Dame Quickly would say, '^ like one of those harlotry 
players." 

I mean no disrespect to any actor, but the sort of pleasure 
which Shakespeare's plays give in the acting seems to me not 20 
at all to differ from that which the audience receive from those 
of other writers ; and, they being in themselves essentially so 
di^e rent from all others, I must conclude that there is some- 
thing in the nature of acting which levels all distinctions. And 
in fact, who does not speak indifferently of the Gamester and 25 
of Macbeth as fine stage performances, and praise the Mrs. 
Beverley in the same way as the Lady Macbeth of Mrs. S.? 
Belvidera, and Calista, and Isabella, and Euphrasia, are they 
less liked than Imogen, or than Juliet, or than Desdemona? 
Are they not spoken of and remembered in the same way? 30 
Is not the female performer as great (as they call it) in one as 
in the other? Did not Garrick shine, and was he not ambi- 
tious of shining in every drawling tragedy that his wretched 
day produced, — the productions of the Hills and the Murphys 



248 ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 

and the Browns, — and shall he have that honour to dwell in 
our minds for ever as an inseparable concomitant with Shake- 
speare ? A kindred mind ! O who can read that affecting sonnet 
of Shakespeare which alludes to his profession as a player : — 

5 Oh for my sake do you with Fortune chide, 

The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, 
That did not better for my life provide 
Than public means which public manners breeds — 
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand ; 
10 And almost thence my nature is subdued 

To what it works in, like the dyer's hand 

Or that other confession : — 

Alas! 'tis true, I have gone here and there, 
And made myself a motley to the view, 
15 Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear — 

Who can read these instances of jealous self- watchfulness in 
our sweet Shakespeare, and dream of any congeniahty between 
him and one that, by every tradition of him, appears to have 
been as mere a player as ever existed ; to have had his mind 

20 tainted with the lowest players' vices, — envy and jealousy, and 
miserable cravings after applause ; one who in the exercise of 
his profession was jealous even of the women-performers that 
stood in his way ; a manager full of managerial tricks and 
stratagems and finesse : that any resemblance should be 

25 dreamed of between him and Shakespeare, — Shakespeare 
who, in the plenitude and consciousness of his own powers, 
could with that noble modesty, which we can neither imitate 
nor appreciate, express himself thus of his own sense of his 
own defects : — 

30 Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 

Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd ; 
Desiring this 7na7i's art, and that jnarCs scope. 



ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 249 

I am almost disposed to deny to Garrick the merit of being 
an admirer of Shakespeare. A true lover of his excellencies 
he certainly was not ; for would any true lover of them have 
admitted into his matchless scenes such ribald trash as Tate 
and Gibber, and the rest of them, that 5 

With their darkness durst affront his light, 

have foisted into the acting plays of Shakespeare ? I believe 
it impossible that he could have had a proper reverence for 
Shakespeare, and have condescended to go through that inter- 
polated scene in Richard the Third, in which Richard tries to 10 
break his wife's heart by telHng her he loves another woman, 
and says, "if she survives this she is immortal." Yet I doubt 
not he delivered this vulgar stuff with as much anxiety of 
emphasis as any of the genuine parts : and for acting, it is 
as well calculated as any. But we have seen the part of 15 
Richard lately produce great fame to an actor by his manner 
of playing it, and it lets us into the secret of acting, and of 
popular judgments of Shakespeare derived from acting. Not 
one of the spectators who have witnessed Mr. G.'s exertions in 
that part, but has come away with a proper conviction that 20 
Richard is a very wicked man, and kills little children in their 
beds, with something like the pleasure which the giants and 
ogres in children's books are represented to have taken in 
that practice ; moreover, that he is very close and shrewd and 
devihsh cunning, for you could see that by his eye. 25 

But is in fact this the impression we have in reading the 
Richard of Shakespeare? Do we feel anything like disgust, 
as we do at that butcher-like representation of him that passes 
for him on the stage ? A horror at his crimes blends with the 
effect which we feel, but how is it qualified, how is it carried 30 
off, by the rich intellect which he displays, his resources, his 
wit, his buoyant spirits, his vast knowledge and insight into 
characters, the poetry of his part — not aii atom of all which 



250 ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 

is made perceivable in Mr. C.'s way of acting it. Nothing but 
his crimes, his actions, is visible ; they are prominent and star- 
ing ; the murderer stands out, but where is the lofty genius, the 
man of vast capacity, — the profound, the witty, accomplished 
5 Richard? 

The truth is, the Characters of Shakespeare are so much the 
objects of meditation rather than of interest or curiosity as to 
their actions, that while we are reading any of his great crim- 
inal characters, — Macbeth, Richard, even lago, — we think 

10 not so much of the crimes which they commit, as of the ambi- 
tion, the aspiring spirit, the intellectual activity, which prompts 
them to overleap those moral fences. Barnwell is a wretched 
murderer ; there is a certain fitness between his neck and the 
rope ; he is the legitimate heir to the gallows ; nobody who 

15 thinks at all can think of any alleviating circumstances in 
his case to make him a fit object of mercy. Or to take an 
instance from the higher tragedy, what else but a mere assas- 
sin is Glenalvon ! Do we think of anything but of the crime 
which he commits, and the rack which he deserves? That is 

20 all which we really think about him. Whereas in correspond- 
ing characters in Shakespeare so little do the actions compara- 
tively affect us, that while the impulses, the inner mind in all 
its perverted greatness, solely seems real and is exclusively 
attended to, the crime is comparatively nothing. But when 

25 we see these things represented, the acts which they do are 
comparatively everything, their impulses nothing. The state 
of sublime emotion into which we are elevated by those images 
of night and horror which Macbeth is made to utter, that 
solemn prelude with which he entertains the time till the bell 

30 shall strike which is to call him to murder Duncan, — when 
we no longer read it in a book, when we have given up that 
vantage-ground of abstraction which reading possesses over 
seeing, and come to see a man in his bodily shape before our 
eyes actually preparing to commit a murder, if the acting be 



ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 25 I 

true and impressive, as I have witnessed it in Mr. K.'s per- 
formance of that part, the painful anxiety about the act, the 
natural longing to prevent it while it yet seems unperpetrated, 
the too close pressing semblance of reality, give a pain and 
an uneasiness which totally destroy all the delight which the 5 
words in the book convey, where the deed doing never presses 
upon us with the painful sense of presence : it rather seems 
to belong to history, — to something past and inevitable, if it 
has anything to do with time at all. The sublime images, the 
poetry alone, is that which is present to our minds in the 10 
reading. 

So to see Lear acted, — to see an old man tottering about 
the stage with a walking-stick, turned out of doors by his daugh- 
ters in a rainy night, has nothing in it but what is painful and 
disgusting. We want to take him into shelter and relieve him. 15 
That is all the feeling which the acting of Lear ever produced 
in me. But the Lear of Shakespeare cannot be acted. The 
contemptible machinery by which they mimic the storm which 
he goes out in, is not more inadequate to represent the horrors 
of the real elements, than any actor can be to represent Lear : 20 
they might more easily propose to personate the Satan of Milton 
upon a stage, or one of Michael Angelo's terrible figures. The 
greatness of Lear is not in corporal dimension, but in intel- 
lectual : the explosions of his passion are terrible as a volcano : 
they are storms turning up and disclosing to the bottom that 25 
sea his mind, with all its vast riches. It is his mind which is 
laid bare. This case of flesh and blood seems too insignificant 
to be thought on ; even as he himself neglects it. On the 
stage we see nothing but corporal infirmities and weakness, 
the impotence of rage ; while we read it, we see not Lear, 30 
but we are Lear, — we are in his mind, we are sustained by a 
grandeur which baffles the malice of daughters and storms ; in 
the aberrations of his reason, we discover a mighty irregular 
power of reasoning, immethodized from the ordinary purposes 



252 ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 

of life, but exerting its powers, as the wind blows where it 
listeth, at will upon the corruptions and abuses of mankind. 
What have looks, or tones, to do with that sublime identifica- 
tion of his age with that of the heavens themselves, when in 
5 his reproaches to them for conniving at the injustice of his 
children, he reminds them that "they themselves are old"? 
What gesture shall we appropriate to this ? What has the voice 
or the eye to do with such things ? But the play is beyond 
all art, as the tamperings with it show : it is too hard and 

10 stony ; it must have love-scenes, and a happy ending. It is 
not enough that Cordelia is a daughter, she must shine as a 
lover too. Tate has put his hook in the nostrils of this Levi- 
athan, for Garrick and his followers, the showmen of the scene, 
to draw the mighty beast about more easily. A happy ending ! 

15 — as if the living martyrdom that Lear had gone through, — 
the flaying of his feelings alive, did not make a fair dismissal 
from the stage of life the only decorous thing for him. If he 
is to live and be happy after, if he could sustain this world's 
burden after, why all this pudder and preparation, — why tor- 

20 ment us with all this unnecessary sympathy ? As if the child- 
ish pleasure of getting his gilt robes and sceptre again could 
tempt him to act over again his misused station, — as if at his 
years, and with his experience, anything was left but to die. 
Lear is essentially impossible to be represented on a stage. 

25 But how many dramatic personages are there in Shakespeare, 
which though more tractable and feasible (if I may so speak) 
than Lear, yet from some circumstance, some adjunct to their 
character, are improper to be shown to our bodily eye. Othello 
for instance. Nothing can be more soothing, more flattering 

30 to the nobler parts of our natures, than to read of a young 
Venetian lady of highest extraction, through the force of love 
and from a sense of merit in him whom she loved, laying aside 
every consideration of kindred, and country, and colour, and 
wedding with a coal-black Moor — (for such he is represented, 



ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 253 

in the imperfect state of knowledge respecting foreign coun- 
tries in those days, compared with our own, or in compHance 
with popular notions, though the Moors are now well enough 
known to be by many shades less unworthy of a white woman's 
fancy) — it is the perfect triumph of virtue over accidents, of 5 
the imagination over the senses. She sees Othello's colour in 
his mind. But upon the stage, when the imagination is no 
longer the ruling faculty, but we are left to our poor unassisted 
senses, I appeal to every one that has seen Othello played, 
whether he did not, 01^ the contrary, sink Othello's mind in 10 
his colour; whether he did not find something extremely 
revolting in the courtship and wedded caresses of Othello and 
Desdemona ; and whether the actual sight of the thing did not 
over-weigh all that beautiful compromise which we make in 
reading ; — and the reason it should do so is obvious, because 1 5 
there is just so much reality presented to our senses as to give 
a perception of disagreement, with not enough of belief in the 
internal motives, — all that which is unseen, — to overpower 
and reconcile the first and obvious prejudices.^ What we see 
upon a stage is body and bodily action ; what we are conscious 20 
of in reading is almost exclusively the mind, and its movements : 
and this I think may sufficiently account for the very different 
sort of delight with which the same play so often affects us in 
the reading and the seeing. • 

1 The error of supposing that because Othello's colour does not 
offend us in the reading, it should also not offend us in the seeing, is 
just such a fallacy as supposing that an Adam and Eve in a picture 
shall affect us just as they do in the poem. But in the poem we for a 
while have Paradisaical senses given us, which vanish when we see a 
man and his wife without clothes in the picture. The painters them- 
selves feel this, as is apparent by the awkward shifts they have recourse 
to, to make them look not quite naked ; by a sort of prophetic anachro- 
nism antedating the invention of fig-leaves. So in the reading of the 
play, we see with Desdemona's eyes ; in the seeing of it, we are forced 
to look with our own. 



2 54 ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 

It requires little reflection to perceive, that if those charac- 
ters in Shakespeare which are within the precincts of nature, 
have yet something in them which appeals too exclusively to 
the imagination, to admit of their being made objects to 
5 the senses without suffering a change and a diminution, — 
that still stronger the objection must lie against representing 
another line of characters, which Shakespeare has introduced 
to give a wildness and a supernatural elevation to his scenes, as 
if to remove them still farther from that assimilation to common 

lo life in which their excellence is vulgarly supposed to consist. 
When we read the incantations of those terrible beings the 
Witches in Macbeth, though some of the ingredients of their 
hellish composition savour of the grotesque, yet is the effect 
upon us other than the most serious and appalling that can be 

15 imagined? Do we not feel spell-bound as Macbeth was? Can 
any mirth accompany a sense of their presence ? We might as 
well laugh under a consciousness of the principle of Evil him- 
self being truly and really present with us. But attempt to 
bring these beings on to a stage, and you turn them instantly 

20 into so many old women, that men and children are to laugh 
at. Contrary to the old saying, that " seeing is believing," the 
sight actually destroys the faith : and the mirth in which we 
indulge at their expense, when we see these creatures upon a 
stage, seems to be a»sort of indemnification which we make to 

25 ourselves for the terror which they put us in when reading 
made them an object of behef, — when we surrendered up our 
reason to the poet, as children to their nurses and their elders ; 
and we laugh at our fears, as children who thought they saw 
something in the dark, triumph when the bringing in of a can- 

30 die discovers the vanity of their fears. For this exposure of 
supernatural agents upon a stage is truly bringing in a candle 
to expose their own delusiveness. It is the sohtary taper and 
the book that generates a faith in these terrors : a ghost by 
chandelier light, and in good company, deceives no spectators, 



ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 255 

— a ghost that can be measured by the eye, and his human 
dimensions made out at leisure. The sight of a well-Hghted 
house, and a well-dressed audience, shall arm the most nervous 
child against any apprehensions : as Tom Brown says of the 
impenetrable skin of Achilles with his impenetrable armour 5 
over it, '' Bully Dawson would have fought the devil with such 
advantages." 

Much has been said, and deservedly, in reprobation of the 
vile mixture which Dryden has thrown into the Tempest : 
doubtless without some such vicious alloy, the impure ears 10 
of that age would never have sate out to hear so much inno- 
cence of love as is contained in the sweet courtship of Ferdi- 
nand and Miranda. But is the Tempest of Shakespeare at all 
a subject for stage representation? It is one thing to read of 
an enchanter, and to believe the wondrous tale while we are 15 
reading it; but to have a conjuror brought before us in his 
conjuring-gown, with his spirits about him, which none but 
himself and some hundred of favoured spectators before the 
curtain are supposed to see, involves such a quantity of the 
hateful incredible, that all our reverence for the author cannot 20 
hinder us from perceiving such gross attempts upon the senses 
to be in the highest degree childish and inefficient. Spirits 
and fairies cannot be represented, they cannot even be painted, 

— they can only be believed. But the elaborate and anxious 
provision of scenery, which the luxury of the age demands, in 25 
these cases works a quite contrary effect to what is intended. 
That which in comedy, or plays of familiar life, adds so much 

to the life of the imitation, in plays which appeal to the higher 
faculties, positively destroys the illusion which it is introduced 
to aid. A parlour or a drawing-room, — a library opening into 30 
a garden, — a garden with an alcove in it, — a street, or the 
piazza of Covent Garden, does well enough in a scene ; we are 
content to give as much credit to it as it demands ; or rather, 
we think Httle about it, — it is httle more than reading at the 



256 ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 

top of a page, " Scene, a Garden" ; we do not imagine ourselves 
there, but we readily admit the imitation of familiar objects. 
But to think by the help of painted trees and caverns, which 
we know to be painted, to transport our minds to Prospero, 
5 and his island and his lonely cell ; ^ or by the aid of a fiddle 
dexterously thrown in, in an interval of speaking, to make us 
beheve that we hear those supernatural noises of which the 
isle was full : — the Orrery Lecturer at the Haymarket might 
as well hope, by his musical glasses cleverly stationed out of 
10 sight behind his apparatus, to make us believe that we do 
indeed hear the crystal spheres ring out that chirpe, which if 
it were to inwrap our fancy long, Milton thinks, 

Time would run back and fetch the age of gold, 
And speckled vanity 
15 Would sicken soon and die, 

And leprous Sin would melt from earthly mould ; 

Yea Hell itself would pass away, 

And leave its dolorous mansions to the peering day. 

The Garden of Eden, with our first parents in it, is not more 
20 impossible to be shown on a stage, than the Enchanted Isle, 
with its no less interesting and innocent first settlers. 

The subject of Scenery is closely connected with that of the 
Dresses, which are so anxiously attended to on our stage. I 
remember the last time I saw Macbeth played, the discrepancy 
25 I felt at the changes of garment which he varied, — the shift- 
ings and re-shiftings, like a Romish priest at mass. The luxury 
of stage-improvements, and the importunity of the public eye, 
require this. The coronation robe of the Scottish monarch 

^ It will be said these things are done in pictures. But pictures 
and scenes are very different things. Painting is a world of itself, 
but in scene-painting there is the attempt to deceive ; and there is the 
discordancy, never to be got over, between painted scenes and real 
people. 



ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 257 

was fairly a counterpart to that which our King wears when he 
goes to the Parliament-house, — just so full and cumbersome, 
and set out with ermine and pearls. And if things must be 
represented, I see not what to find fault with in this. But in 
reading, what robe are we conscious of? Some dim images 5 
of royalty — a crown and sceptre, may float before our eyes, 
but who shall describe the fashion of it? Do we see in our 
mind's eye what Webb or any other robe-maker could pattern? 
This is the inevitable consequence of imitating everything, to 
make all things natural. Whereas the reading of a tragedy is 10 
a fine abstraction. It presents to the fancy just so much of 
external appearances as to make us feel that we are among 
flesh and blood, while by far the greater and better part of 
our imagination is employed upon the thoughts and internal 
machinery of the character. But in acting, scenery, dress, 15 
the most contemptible things, call upon us to judge of their 
naturalness. 

Perhaps it would be no bad similitude, to liken the pleasure 
which we take in seeing one of these fine plays acted, com- 
pared with that quiet delight which we find in the reading of 20 
it, to the different feelings with which a reviewer, and a man 
that is not a reviewer, reads a fine poem. The accursed critical 
habit, — the being called upon to judge and pronounce, must 
make it quite a different thing to the former. In seeing these 
plays acted, we are, affected just as judges. When Hamlet 25 
compares the two pictures of Gertrude's first and second hus- 
band, who wants to see the pictures? But in the acting, a 
miniature must be lugged out ; which we know not to be the 
picture, but only to show how finely a miniature may be repre- 
sented. This showing of everything, levels all things : it 30 
makes tricks, bows, and curtseys, of importance. Mrs. S. 
never got more fame by anything than by the manner in which 
she dismisses the guests in the banquet-scene in Macbeth : it is 
as much remembered as any of her thrilling tones or impressive 



258 ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 

looks. But does such a trifle as this enter into the imagina- 
tions of the reader of that wild and wonderful scene ? Does 
not the mind dismiss the feasters as rapidly as it can? Does 
it care about the gracefulness of the doing it? But by acting, 
5 and judging of acting, all these non-essentials are raised into 
an importance, injurious to the main interest of the play. 

I have confined my observations to the tragic parts of 
Shakespeare. It would be no very difficult task to extend the 
inquiry to his comedies; and to show why Falstaif, Shallow, 
10 Sir Hugh Evans, and the rest are equally incompatible with 
stage representation. The length to which this Essay has run, 
will make it, I am afraid, sufficiently distasteful to the Ama- 
teurs of the Theatre, without going any deeper into the 
subject at present. 



XXXV. NOTES ON THE ELIZABETHAN AND 
OTHER DRAMATISTS 

PREFACE TO "SPECIMENS OF THE ENGLISH DRAMATIC POETS," 

PUBLISHED IN 1808 

15 More than a third part of the following specimens are from 
plays which are to be found only in the British Museum and 
in some scarce private libraries. The rest are from Dodsley's 
and Hawkins's collections, and the works 'bf Jonson, Beaumont 
and Fletcher, and Massinger. 

20 I have chosen wherever I could to give entire scenes, and in 

some instances successive scenes, rather than to string together 

single passages and detached beauties, which I have always 

found wearisome in the reading in selections of this nature. 

To every extract is prefixed an explanatory head, sufficient 

25 to make it intelligible with the help of some trifling omissions. 
Where a line or more was obscure, as having reference to 



ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 259 

something that had gone before, which would have asked more 
time to explain than its consequence in the scene seemed to 
deserve, I have had no hesitation in leaving the line or passage 
out. Sometimes where I have met with a superfluous character, 
which seemed to burthen without throwing any light upon the 5 
scene, I have ventured to dismiss it altogether. 1 have expunged 
without ceremony all that which the writers had better never 
have written, that forms the objection so often repeated to the 
promiscuous reading of Fletcher, Massinger, and some others. 

The kind of extracts which I have sought after have been, 10 
not so much passages of wit and humour, though the old 
plays are rich in such, as scenes of passion, sometimes of the 
deepest quality, interesting situations, serious descriptions, that 
which is more nearly allied to poetry than to wit, and to tragic 
rather than to comic poetry. The plays which I have made 15 
choice of have been, with few exceptions, those which treat 
of human life and manners, rather than masques, and Arcadian 
pastorals, with their train of abstractions, unimpassioned 
deities, passionate mortals, Claius, and Medorus, and Amin- 
tas, and Amarilhs. My leading design has been, to illustrate 20 
what may be called the moral sense of our ancestors ; to show 
in what manner they felt, when they placed themselves by the 
power of imagination in trying situations, in the conflicts of 
duty and passion, or the strife of contending duties ; what 
sort of loves and enmities theirs were; how their griefs were 25 
tempered, and their full-swoln joys abated : how much of 
Shakespeare shines in the great men his contemporaries, and 
how far in his divine mind and manners he surpassed them 
and all mankind. 

Another object which I had in making these selections was, 30 
to bring together the most admired scenes in Fletcher and 
Massinger, in the estimation of the world the only dramatic 
poets of that age who are entitled to be considered after 
Shakespeare, and to exhibit them in the same volume with the 



260 ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 

more impressive scenes of old Marlowe, Heywood, Tourneur, 
Webster, Ford, and others, to show what we have slighted, 
while beyond all proportion we have cried up one or two 
favourite names. 
5 The specimens are not accompanied with anything in the 
shape of biographical notices.-^ I had nothing of consequence 
to add to the slight sketches in Dodsley and the Biographia 
Dramatica, and I was unwilling to swell the volume with mere 
transcription. The reader will not fail to observe from the 

lo frequent instances of two or more persons joining in the com- 
position of the same play (the noble practice of those times), 
that of most of the writers contained in these selections it may 
be strictly said, that they were contemporaries. The whole 
period, from the middle of Elizabeth's reign to the close of 

15 the reign of Charles I, comprises a space of little more than 
half a century, within which time nearly all that we have of 
excellence in serious dramatic composition was produced, if 
we except the Samson Agonistes of Milton. 

1808. 

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE 

Lusfs Dominio?t, or the Lascivious Queen. — Kit Marlowe, 
20 as old Izaak Walton assures us, made that smooth song which 
begins " Come live with me and be my love." The same 
romantic invitations "in folly ripe in reason rotten," are given 
by the queen in the play, and the lover in the ditty. He talks 
of " beds of roses, buckles of gold : " 

25 Thy silver dishes for thy meat. 

As precious as the Gods do eat, 
Shall on an ivory table be 
Prepared each day for thee and me. 

1 The few notes which are interspersed will be found to be chiefly 
critical. 



I 



ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 26 1 

The lines in the extract have a luscious smoothness in them, 
and they were the most temperate which I could pick out of 
this Play. The rest is in King Cambyses' vein; rape, and 
murder, and superlatives ; " huffing braggart puft " lines, such 
as the play-writers anterior to Shakespeare are full of, and 5 
Pistol " but coldly imitates." Blood is made as light of in 
some of these old dramas as mo?iey in a modern sentimental 
comedy ; and as this is given away till it reminds us that it is 
nothing but counters, so that is spilt till it affects us no more 
than its representative, the paint of the property-man in the 10 
theatre. 

Tamburlaine the Great, or the Scythian Shepherd. — The 
lunes of Tamburlaine are perfect midsummer madness. 
Nebuchadnazar's are mere modest pretensions compared with 
the thundering vaunts of this Scythian Shepherd. He comes 15 
in, drawn by conquered kings, and reproaches these pampered 
jades of Asia that they can draw but tiventy miles a day. 
Till I saw this passage with my own eyes, I never believed 
that it was anything more than a pleasant burlesque of mine 
ancient's. But I can assure my readers that it is soberly set 20 
down in a play, which their ancestors took to be serious. 

Edward the Second. — In a very different style from mighty 
Tamburlaine is the tragedy of Edward the Second. The 
reluctant pangs of abdicating royalty in Edward furnished 
hints, which Shakespeare scarcely improved in his Richard 25 
the Second ; and the death-scene of Marlowe's king moves 
pity and terror beyond any scene ancient or modern with 
which I am acquainted. 

The Rich Jew of Malta. — Marlowe's Jew does not 
approach so near to Shakespeare's, as his Edward the Second 30 
does to Richard the Second. Barabas is a mere monster 
brought in with a large painted nose to please the rabble. 
He kills in sport, poisons whole nunneries, invents infernal 
machines, He is just such an exhibition as a century or two 



262 ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 

earlier might have been played before the Londoners " by the 
royal command," when a general pillage and massacre of the 
Hebrews had been previously resolved on in the cabinet. It 
is curious to see a superstition wearing out. The idea of a 
5 Jew, which our pious ancestors contemplated with so much 
horror, has nothing in it now revolting. We have tamed the 
claws of the beast, and pared its nails, and now we take it 
to our arms, fondle it, write plays to flatter it ; it is visited by 
princes, affects a taste, patronizes the arts, and is the only 

lo liberal and gentlemanlike thing in Christendom. 

Doctor Faustus. — The growing horrors of Faustus's last 
scene are awfully marked by the hours and half hours as they 
expire, and bring him nearer and nearer to the exactment 
of his dire compact. It is indeed an agony and a fearful 

15 coUuctation. Marlowe is said to have been tainted with athe- 
istical positions, to have denied God and the Trinity. To 
such a genius the history of Faustus must have been delect- 
able food : to wander in fields where curiosity is forbidden to 
go, to approach the dark gulf near enough to look in, to be 

20 busied in speculations which are the rottenest part of the core 
of the fruit that fell from the tree of knowledge. Barabas the 
Jew, and Faustus the conjurer, are offsprings of a mind which 
at least delighted to dally with interdicted subjects. They 
both talk a language which a believer would have been tender 

25 of putting into the mouth of a character though but in fiction. 
But the holiest minds have sometimes not thought it repre- 
hensible to counterfeit impiety in the person of another, to 
bring Vice upon the stage speaking her own dialect; and 
themselves being armed with an unction of self-confident 

30 impunity, have not scrupled to handle and touch that famil- 
iarly, which would be death to others. Milton in the person 
of Satan has started speculations hardier than any which the 
feeble armoury of the atheist ever furnished ; and the pre- 
cise, strait-laced Richardson has strengthened Vice, from the 



ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 263 

mouth of Lovelace, with entangling sophistries and abstruse 
pleas against her adversary Virtue, which Sedley, Vilhers, 
and Rochester wanted depth of libertinism enough to have 
invented. 

THOMAS DEKKER 

Old Fortunatus. — The humour of a frantic lover, in the s 
scene where Orleans to his friend Galloway defends the pas- 
sion with which himself, being a prisoner in the English king's 
court, is enamoured to frenzy of the king's daughter Agripyna, 
is done to the life. Orleans is as passionate an inamorato 
as any which Shakespeare ever drew. He is just such another 10 
adept in Love's reasons. The sober people of the world are 

with him 

A swarm of fools 

Crowding together to be counted wise. 

He talks "pure Biron and Romeo," he is almost as poetical 15 
as they, quite as philosophical, only a little madder. After all, 
Love's sectaries are a reason unto themselves. We have gone 
retrograde to the noble heresy, since the days when Sidney 
proselyted our nation to this mixed health and disease ; the 
kindliest symptom, yet the most alarming crisis in the ticklish 20 
state of youth ; the nourisher and the destroyer of hopeful 
wits ; the mother of twin births, wisdom and folly, valour and 
weakness ; the servitude above freedom ; the gentle mind's 
religion; the liberal superstition. 

Satiro-MasHx, or the Untrussing of the Humorous Poet. — 25 
[The king exacts an oath from Sir Walter Terill to send his 
bride Cselestina to court on the marriage night. Her father, 
to save her honour, gives her a poisonous mixture which she 
swallows.] 

The beauty and force of this scene are much diminished to 30 
the reader of the entire play, when he comes to find that this 



264 ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 

solemn preparation is but a sham contrivance of the father's, 
and the potion which Cselestina swallows nothing more than a 
sleeping draught ; from the effects of which she is to awake in 
due time, to the surprise of her husband, and the great mirth 
5 and edification of the king and his courtiers. As Hamlet says, 
they do but " poison in jest." The sentiments are worthy of a 
real martyrdom, and an Appian sacrifice in earnest. 

The Ho7iest Whore. — There is in the second part of this play, 
where Bellafront, a reclaimed harlot, recounts some of the mis- 

10 eries of her profession, a simple picture of honour and shame, 
contrasted without violence, and expressed without immodesty, 
which is worth all the strong lines against the harlot's profession, 
with which both parts of this play are offensively crowded. A 
satirist is always to be suspected, who, to make vice odious, 

15 dwells upon all its acts and minutest circumstances with a 
sort of rehsh and retrospective fondness. But so near are the 
boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner 
is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. 
The same high-seasoned descriptions, which in his unregen- 

20 erate state served but to inflame his appetites, in his new prov- 
ince of morahst will serve him, a Httle turned, to expose the 
enormity of those appetites in other men. When Cervantes 
with such proficiency of fondness dwells upon the Don's library, 
who sees not that he has been a great reader of books of knight- 

25 errantry — perhaps was at some time of his life in danger of fall- 
ing into those very extravagancies which he ridiculed so happily 
in his hero? 

JOHN MARSTON 

Antonio and Mellida. — The situation of Andrugio and 

Lucio, in the first part of this tragedy, where Andrugio Duke 

30 of Genoa, banished his country, with the loss of a son supposed 

drowned, is cast upon the territory of his mortal enemy the 

Duke of Venice, with no attendants but Lucio an old nobleman, 



ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 265 

and a page resembles that of Lear and Kent in that 

king's distresses. Andrugio, Hke Lear, manifests a kinglike 
impatience, a turbulent greatness, an affected resignation. 
The enemies which he enters lists to combat, " Despair and 
mighty Grief and sharp Impatience," and the forces which he 5 
brings to vanquish them, "cornets of horse," &c., are in the 
boldest style of allegory. They are such a '' race of mourners " 
as the *' infection of sorrows loud " in the intellect might beget 
on some " pregnant cloud " in the imagination. The prologue 
to the second part, for its passionate earnestness, and for the 10 
tragic note of preparation which it sounds, might have pre- 
ceded one of those old tales of Thebes or Pelops' line, which 
Milton has so highly commended, as free from the common 
error of the poets in his day, of " intermixing comic stuff with 
tragic sadness and gravity, brought in without discretion cor- 15 
ruptly to gratify the people." It is as solemn a preparative as 
the warning voice which he who saw the Apocalypse heard cry. 
What You Will. — O I shall ?ie' er forget how he went clothed. 
Act I. Scene I. — To judge of the liberahty of these notions 
of dress, we must advert to the days of Gresham, and the con- 20 
sternation which a phenomenon habited like the merchant here 
described would have excited among the flat round caps and 
cloth stockings upon 'Change, when those " original arguments 
or tokens of a citizen's vocation were in fashion, not more for 
thrift and usefulness than for distinction and grace." The blank 25 
uniformity to which all professional distinctions in apparel have 
been long hastening, is one instance of the decay of symbols 
among us, which whether it has contributed or not to make us 
a more intellectual, has certainly made us a less imaginative 
people. Shakespeare knew the force of signs: a "malignant 30 
and a turban'd Turk." This "meal-cap miller," says the author 
of God^s Revenge agamst Murder^ to express his indignation at 
an atrocious outrage committed by the miller Pierot upon the 
person of the fair Marieta. 



266 ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 

AUTHOR UNKNOWN 

The Merry Devil of Edmonton} — The scene in this delight-. 
ful comedy, in which Jerningham, " with the true feeling of 
a zealous friend," touches the griefs of Mounchensey, seems 
written to make the reader happy. Few of our dramatists 
5 or novelists have attended enough to this. They torture and 
wound us abundantly. They are economists only in delight. 
Nothing can be finer, more gentlemanlike, and nobler, than 
the conversation and compliments of these young men. How 
delicious is Raymond Mounchensey' s forgetting, in his fears, 

lo that Jerningham has a " Saint in Essex ; " and how sweetly 
his friend reminds him ! I wish it could be ascertained, that 
Michael Drayton was the author of this piece. It would add 
a worthy appendage to the renown of that Panegyrist of my 
native Earth : who has gone over her soil, in his Polyolbion, with 

1 5 the fidelity of a herald, and the painful love of a son ; who has 
not left a rivulet, so narrow that it may be stepped over, with- 
out honourable mention ; and has animated hills and streams 
with life and passion beyond the dreams of old mythology. 

THOMAS HEYWOOD 

The Fair Maid of the Exchange. — The full title of this play 
2o is " The Fair Maid of the Exchange, with the Humours of the 
Cripple of Fenchurch." The above satire against some Dra- 
matic Plagiarists of the time, is put into the mouth of the Crip- 
ple, who is an excellent fellow, and the hero of the Comedy. 
Of his humour this extract is a sufficient specimen ; but he is 
25 described (albeit a tradesman, yet wealthy withal) with heroic 
qualities of mind and body ; the latter of which he evinces by 
rescuing his Mistress (the Fair Maid) from three robbers by 

1 It has been ascribed without much proof to Shakespeare and to 
Michael Drayton. 



ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 2^"] 

the main force of one crutch kistily appHed ; and the former 
by his foregoing the advantages which this action gained him 
in her good opinion, and bestowing his wit and finesse in pro- 
curing for her a husband, in the person of his friend Golding, 
more worthy of her beauty, than he could conceive his own 5 
maimed and halting limbs to be. It would require some bold- 
ness in a dramatist nowadays to exhibit such a character ; and 
some luck in finding a sufficient actor, who would be willing 
to personate the infirmities, together with the virtues, of the 
noble Cripple. 10 

A Woman Killed with Ki7idness, — Hey wood is a sort of 
prose Shakespeare. His scenes are to the full as natural and 
affecting. But we miss the poet, that which in Shakespeare 
always appears out and above the surface of the nature. Hey- 
wood's characters in this play, for instance, his country gentle- 15 
men, &c., are exactly what we see, but of the best kind of what 
we see in life. Shakespeare makes us believe, while we are 
among his lovely creations, that they are nothing but what we 
are familiar with, as in dreams new things seem old ; but we 
awake, and sigh for the difference. 20 

I am tempted to extract some lines from Heywood's " Hier- 
archie of Angels, 1634 ; " not strictly as a Dramatic Poem, but 
because the passage contains a string of names, all but that of 
Watsoft, his contemporary Dramatists. He is complaining in 
a mood half serious, half comic, of the disrespect which Poets 25 
in his own times meet with from the world, compared with the 
honours paid them by Antiquity. Then, they could afford them 
three or four sonorous names, and at full length ; as to Ovid, 
the addition of Publius Naso Sulmensis; to Seneca, that of 
Lucius Annseas Cordubensis ; and the like. JVow, says he, 30 

Our modern Poets to that pass are driven, 
Those names are curtail'd which they first had given ; 
And, as we wish'd to have their memories drown'd, 
We scarcely can afford them half their sound, 



26S ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 

Greene, who had in both Academies ta'en 
Degree of Master, yet could never gain 
To be call'd more than Robin : who, had he 
Profess'd aught save the Muse, served, and been free 
5 After a seven years' 'prenticeship, might have 

(With credit too) gone Robert to his grave, 
Marlowe, renown'd for his rare art and wit. 
Could ne'er attain beyond the name of Kit ; 
Although his Hero and Leander did ^ 

ID Merit addition rather. Famous Kid 

Was call'd but Tom. Tom Watson, though he wrote 

Able to make Apollo's self to dote 

Upon his Muse ; for all that he could strive. 

Yet never could to his full name arrive. 

15 Tom Nash (in his time of no small esteem) 

Could not a second syllable redeem. 
Excellent Beaumont, in the foremost rank 
Of the rarest wits, was never more than Frank. 
Mellifluous Shakespeare, whose enchanting quill 

20 Commanded mirth or passion, was but Will ; 

And famous Jonson, though his learned pen 
Be dipp'd in Castaly, is still but Ben. 
Fletcher, and Webster, of that learned pack 
None of the meanest, neither was but Jack ; 

25 Dekker's but Tom; nor May, nor Middleton ; 

And he 's now but Jack Ford, that once was John. 

Possibly our Poet was a little sore, that this contemptuous 
curtailment of their baptismal names was chiefly exercised upon 
his poetical brethren of the Drama. We hear nothing about 

30 Sam Daniel or Ned Spenser, in his catalogue. The famiharity 
of common discourse might probably take the greater liberties 
with the Dramatic Poets, as conceiving of them as more upon 
a level with the Stage Actors. Or did their greater publicity, 
and popularity in consequence, fasten these diminutives upon 

35 them out of a feeling of love and kindness, as we say Harry 



ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 269 

the Fifth, rather than Henry, when we would express good- 
will? — as himself says, in those reviving words put into his 
mouth by Shakespeare, where he would comfort and confirm 
his doubting brothers : — 

Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds, 5 

But Harry, Harry ! 

And doubtless Heywood had an indistinct conception of 
this truth, when (coming to his own name), with that beauti- 
ful retracting which is natural to one that, not satirically given, 
has wandered a little out of his way into something recrimina- 10 
tive, he goes on to say : — 

Nor speak I this, that any here exprest 

Should think themselves less worthy than the rest 

Whose names have their full syllables and sound ; 

Or that Frank, Kit, or Jack, are the least wound i^ 

Unto their fame and merit. I for my part 

(Think others what they please) except that heart. 

Which courts my love in most familiar phrase ; 

And that it takes not from my pains or praise, 

If any one to me so bluntly come : 20 

I hold he loves me best that calls me Tom. 

The foundations of the English Drama were laid deep in 
tragedy by Marlowe, and others — Marlowe especially — while 
our comedy was yet in its lisping state. To this tragic pre- 
ponderance (forgetting his own sweet Comedies, and Shake- 25 
speare's), Heywood seems to refer with regret; as in the 
" Roscian Strain " he evidently alludes to Alleyn, who was 
great in the "Jew of Malta," as Heywood elsewhere testifies, 
and in the principal tragic parts both of Marlowe and Shake- 
speare. 30 

The Brazen Age. — I cannot take leave of this Drama with- 
out noticing a touch of the truest pathos, which the writer has 



270 ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 

put into the mouth of Meleager, as he is wasting away by 
the operation of the fatal brand, administered to him by his 
wretched Mother. 

My flame increaseth still — Oh Father QEneus ; 
5 And you, Althea, whom I would call Mother, 

But that my genius prompts me thou 'rt unkind : 
And yet farewell! 

What is the boasted " Forgive me, but forgive me ! " of the 
dying wife of Shore in Rowe, compared with these three little 

10 words? 

The English Iraveller. — Heywood's preface to this play is 
interesting, as it shows the heroic indifference about the opinion 
of posterity, which some of these great writers seem to have 
felt. There is a magnanimity in authorship as in everything 

15 else. His ambition seems to have been confined to the pleasure 
of hearing the players speak his lines while he lived. It does 
not appear that he ever contemplated the possibility of being 
read by after-ages. What a slender pittance of fame was 
motive sufficient to the production of such plays as the English 

20 Traveller, the Challenge for Beauty, and the Woman Killed 
with Kindness ! Posterity is bound to take care that a writer 
loses nothing by such a noble modesty. 

If I were to be consulted as to a Reprint of our Old English 
Dramatists, I should advise to begin with the collected Plays 

25 of Heywood. He was a fellow Actor, and fellow Dramatist, 
with Shakespeare. He possessed not the imagination of the 
latter ; but in all those qualities which gained for Shakespeare 
the attribute oi gentle, he was not inferior to him. Generosity, 
courtesy, temperance in the depths of passion ; sweetness, in a 

30 word, and gentleness ; Christianism ; and true hearty Anglicism 
of feelings, shaping that Christianism ; shine throughout his 
beautiful writings in a manner more conspicuous than in those 
of Shakespeare, but only more conspicuous, inasmuch as in 



ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 2/1 

Heywood these qualities are primary, in the other subordinate 
to poetry. I love them both equally, but Shakespeare has 
most of my wonder. Heywood should be known to his 
countrymen, as he deserves. His plots are almost invariably 
English. I am sometimes jealous, that Shakespeare laid so 5 
few of his scenes at home. I laud Ben Jonson, for that in 
one instance having framed the first draught of his Every 
Man ifi his Humour in Italy, he changed the scene, and 
Anglicised his characters. The names of them in the First 
Edition, may not be unamusing. 10 

Men. Women. 

Lorenzo, Sen. Guilliana. 

Lorenzo, Jun. Biancha. 

Prospero. Hesperida. 

Thorello. Tib (the same in English). 

Stephano (Master Stephen), 15 

Dr. Clement (Justice Clement). 

Bobadilla (Bobadil). 

Musco. 

Cob (the same in English). 

Peto. 20 

Pizo. 

Matheo (Master Mathew). 

How say you, Reader? do not Master Kitely, Mistress 
Kitely, Master Knowell, Brainworm, &c., read better than 
these Cisalpines? 25 

THOMAS MIDDLETON AND WILLIAM ROWLEY 

A Fair Quan^el. — The insipid levelling morality to which 
the modern stage is tied down, would not admit of such 
admirable passions as these scenes are filled with. A puri- 
tanical obtuseness of sentiment, a stupid infantile goodness, 
is creeping among us, instead of the vigorous passions, and 30 



272 ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 

virtues clad in flesh and blood, with which the old dramatists 
present us. Those noble and liberal casuists could discern in 
the differences, the quarrels, the animosities of men, a beauty 
and truth of moral feeling, no less than in the everlastingly 
5 inculcated duties of forgiveness and atonement. With us, all 
is hypocritical meekness. A reconciliation-scene, be the occa- 
sion never so absurd, never fails of applause. Our audiences 
come to the theatre to be complimented on their goodness. 
They compare notes with ^e amiable characters in the play, 

10 and find a wonderful sympathy of disposition between them. 
We have a common stock of dramatic morality, out of which 
a writer may be supplied without the trouble of copying it 
from originals within his own breast. To know the boundaries 
of honour, to be judiciously valiant, to have a temperance 

15 which shall beget a smoothness in the angry swellings of 
youth, to esteem life as nothing when the sacred reputation of 
a parent is to be defended, yet to shake and tremble under a 
pious cowardice when that ark of an honest confidence is 
found to be frail and tottering, to feel the true blows of a real 

20 disgrace blunting that sword which the imaginary strokes of a 
supposed false imputation had put so keen an edge upon but 
lately : to do, or to imagine this done in a feigned story, asks 
something more of a moral sense, somewhat a greater delicacy 
of perception in questions of right and wrong, than goes to 

25 the writing of two or three hackneyed sentences about the 
laws of honour as opposed to the laws of the land, or a com- 
monplace against duelling. Yet such things would stand a 
writer nowadays in far better stead than Captain Ager and his 
conscientious honour; and he would be considered as a far 

30 better teacher of morality than old Rowley or Middleton, if 
they were living. 



I 



ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 2/3 

WILLIAM ROWLEY 

A New Wonder; a Woman Never Vexed. — The old play- 
writers are distinguished by an honest boldness of exhibition, 
they show everything without being ashamed. If a reverse in 
fortune is to be exhibited, they fairly bring us to the prison- 
grate and the alms-basket. A poor man on our stage is always 5 
a gentleman, he may be known by a peculiar neatness of 
apparel, and by wearing black. Our delicacy in fact forbids 
the dramatizing of distress at all. It is never shown in its 
essential properties ; it appears but as the adjunct of some 
virtue, as something which is to be relieved, from the appro- 10 
bation of which relief the spectators are to derive a certain 
soothing of self-referred satisfaction. We turn away from the 
real essences of things to hunt after their relative shadows, 
moral duties ; whereas, if the truth of things were fairly rep- 
resented, the relative duties might be safely trusted to them- 15 
selves, and moral philosophy lose the name of a science. 

THOMAS MIDDLETON 

Women beware Women: A Tragedy. — [Livia, the Duke's 
creature, cajoles a poor Widow with the appearance of hos- 
pitality and neighbourly attentions, that she may get her 
daughter-in-law (who is left in the Mother's care in the Son's 20 
absence) into her trains, to serve the Duke's pleasure.] 

This is one of those scenes which has the air of being an 
immediate transcript from life. Livia the " good neighbour " 
is as real a creature as one of Chaucer's characters. She is 
such another jolly Housewife as the Wife of Bath. 25 

The Witch. — Though some resemblance may be traced 
between the charms in Macbeth, and the incantations in this 
play, which is supposed to have preceded it, this coincidence 
will not detract much from the originality of Shakespeare. 



274 ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 

His witches are distinguished from the witches of Middle ton 
by essential differences. These are creatures to whom man 
or woman, plotting some dire mischief, might resort for occa- 
sional consultation. Those originate deeds of blood, and begin 
5 bad impulses to men. From the moment that their eyes first 
meet with Macbeth's, he is spell-bound. That meeting sways 
his destiny. He can never break the fascination. These 
witches can hurt the body, those have power over the soul. 
Hecate in Middleton has a son, a low buffoon : the hags of 

lo Shakespeare have neither child of their own, nor seem to be 
descended from any parent. They are foul anomalies, of 
whom we know not whence they are sprung, nor whether they 
have beginning or ending. As they are without human pas- 
sions, so they seem to be without human relations. They 

15 come with thunder and lightning, and vanish to airy music. 
This is all we know of them. Except Hecate, they have no 
names; which heightens their mysteriousness. The names, 
and some of the properties, v/hich the other author has given 
to his hags, excite smiles. The Weird Sisters are serious 

20 things. Their presence cannot co-exist with mirth. But, in 
a lesser degree, the witches of Middleton are fine creations. 
Their power too is, in some measure, over the mind. They 
raise jars, jealousies, strifes, "like a thick scurf" over life. 

WILLIAM ROWLEY —THOMAS DEKKER — 
JOHN FORD, &c. 



11 

f 



The Witch of Edmonton. — Mother Sawyer, in this wild 
25 play, differs from the hags of both Middleton and Shakespeare. 
She is the plain traditional old woman witch of our ancestors ; ' 
poor, deformed, and ignorant ; the terror of villages, herself 
amenable to a justice. That should be a hardy sheriff, with 
the power of the county at his heels, that would lay hands 
30 upon the Weird Sisters. They are of another jurisdiction. 



ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 2/5 

But upon the common and received opinion, the author (or 
authors) have engrafted strong fancy. There is something 
frightfully earnest in her invocations to the Familiar. 

CYRIL TOURNEUR 

The Atheisfs Tragedy. — Drowned Soldier. — This way of 
description, which seems unwilling ever to leave off, weaving 5 
parenthesis within parenthesis, was brought to its height by 
Sir Philip Sidney. He seems to have set the example to 
Shakespeare. Many beautiful instances may be found all over 
the Arcadia. These bountiful Wits always give full measure, 
pressed down and running over. lo 

The Revengers' Tragedy. — The reality and life of the 
dialogue, in which Vindici and Hippolito first tempt their 
mother, and then threaten her with death for consenting to 
the dishonour of their sister, passes any scenical illusion I ever 
felt. I never read it but my ears tingle, and I feel a hot blush 1 5 
overspread my cheeks, as if I were presently about to proclaim 
such malefactions of myself as the brothers here rebuke in their 
unnatural parent, in words more keen and dagger-like than 
those which Hamlet speaks to his mother. Such power has 
the passion of shame truly personated, not only to strike guilty 20 
creatures unto the soul, but to "appal" even those that are 
"free." 

JOHN WEBSTER 

The Duchess of Malfy. — All the several parts of the dread- 
ful apparatus with which the death of the Duchess is ushered 
in, the waxen images which counterfeit death, the wild masque 25 
of madmen, the tomb-maker, the bellman, the living person's 
dirge, the mortification by degrees, — are not more remote 
from the conceptions of ordinary vengeance, than the strange 
character of suffering which they seem to bring upon their 



2/6 ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 

victim is out of the imagination of ordinary poets. As they 
are not like inflictions of this Hfe, so her language seems not 
of this world. She has Hved among horrors till she is become 
"native and endowed unto that element." She speaks the 
5 dialect of despair ; her tongue has a smatch of Tartarus and 
the souls in bale. To move a horror skilfully, to touch a soul 
to the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear, to wean 
and weary a life till it is ready to drop, and then step in with 
mortal instruments to take its last forfeit : this only a Webster 

10 can do. Inferior geniuses may "upon horror's head horrors 
accumulate," but they cannot do this. They mistake quantity 
for quality; they "terrify babes with painted devils"; but 
they know not how a soul is to be moved. Their terrors want 
dignity, their affrightments are without decorum. 

1 5 The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona, — This White Devil 
of Italy sets off a bad cause so speciously, and pleads with such an 
innocence-resembling boldness, that we seem to see that match- 
less beauty of her face which inspires such gay confidence into 
her, and are ready to expect, when she has done her pleadings,- 

2o that her very judges, her accusers, the grave ambassadors who 
sit as spectators, and all the court, will rise and make proffer 
to defend her in spite of the utmost conviction of her guilt ; 
as the Shepherds in Don Quixote make proffer to follow the 
beautiful Shepherdess Marcela, " without making any profit of 

25 her manifest resolution made there in their hearing." 

So sweet and lovely does she make the shame 
Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose, 
Does spot the beauty of her budding name ! 

I never saw anything like the funeral dirge ^ in this play, 
30 for the death of Marcello, except the ditty which reminds ; 

1 Webster was parish clerk at St. Andrew's, Holbom. The anxious . 
recurrence to church-matters ; sacrilege ; tomb-stones ; with the frequent ; 
introduction of dirges ; in this, and his other tragedies, maybe traced to 1 
his professional sympathies. 



ill 



ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 2// 

Ferdinand of his drowned father in the Tempest. As that is 
of the water, watery; so this is of the earth, earthy. Both 
have that intenseness of feehng, which seems to resolve itself 
into the element which it contemplates. 

In a note on the Spanish Tragedy, I have said that there 5 
is nothing in the undoubted plays of Jonson which would 
authorize us to suppose that he could have supplied the addi- 
tions to Hieronymo. I suspected the agency of some more 
potent spirit. I thought that Webster might have furnished 
them. They seemed full of that wild, solemn, preternatural 10 
cast of grief which bewilders us in the Duchess of Malfy. On 
second consideration, I think this a hasty criticism. They are 
more like the overflowing griefs and talking distraction of Titus 
Andronicus. The sorrows of the Duchess set inward ; if she 
talks, it is little more than soliloquy imitating conversation in 15 
a kind of bravery. 



JOHN FORD 



I 

P The Lover's Melancholy ; Contention of a Bird and a Musi- 
cian. — This Story, which is originally to be met with in 
Strada's Prolusions, has been paraphrased in rhyme by Cra- 
shaw, Ambrose Philips, and others : but none of those ver- 20 
sions can at all compare for harmony and grace with this 
blank verse of Ford's. It is as fine as anything in Beaumont 
and Fletcher ; and almost equals the strife which it celebrates. 
^Tis Pity She's a Whore: a Tragedy. — The good Friar in 

|i. this play is evidently a copy of Friar Laurence in Romeo 25 
and Juliet. He is the same kind physician to the souls of 

i his young charges ; but he has more desperate patients to 

\ deal with. 

! The Broken Heart. — I do not know where to find, in any 
play, a catastrophe so grand, so solemn, and so surprising as 30 

* in this. This is indeed, according to Milton, to describe high 
passions and high actions. The fortitude of the Spartan boy. 



2/8 ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 

who let a beast gnaw out his bowels till he died without 
expressing a groan, is a faint bodily image of this dilaceration 
of the spirit, and exenteration of the inmost mind, which 
Calantha, with a holy violence against her nature, keeps 
5 closely covered, till the last duties of a wife and a queen are 
fulfilled. Stories of martyrdom are but of chains and the 
stake ; a little bodily suffering. These torments 

On the purest spirits prey, 
As on entrails, joints, and limbs, 
lo With answerable pains, but more intense. 

What a noble thing is the soul in its strengths and in its 
weaknesses ! Who would be less weak than Calantha? Who 
can be so strong ? The expression of this transcendent scene 
almost bears us in imagination to Calvary and the Cross ; and 

15 we seem to perceive some analogy between the scenical suffer- 
ings which we are here contemplating, and the real agonies of 
that final completion to which we dare no more than hint a 
reference. Ford was of the first order of poets. He sought 
for sublimity, not by parcels, in metaphors or visible images, 

20 but directly where she has her full residence in the heart of 
man ; in the actions and sufferings of the greatest minds. 
There is a grandeur of the soul above mountains, seas, and the 
elements. Even in the poor perverted reason of Giovanni 
and Annabella, in the play^ which stands at the head of the 

25 modern collection of the works of this author, we discern 
traces of that fiery particle, which, in the irregular starting 
from out the road of beaten action, discovers something of a 
right line even in obliquity, and shows hints of an improvable 
greatness in the lowest descents and degradations of our 

30 nature. 

1 'tis Pity She's a Whore. 



ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 2/9 

FULKE GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE 

Alakam, Miistapha. — The two tragedies of Lord Brooke, 
printed among his poems, might with more propriety have 
been termed pohtical treatises than plays. Their author has 
strangely contrived to make passion, character, and interest, 
of the highest order, subservient to the expression of state 5 
dogmas and mysteries. He is nine parts Machiavel and Taci- 
tus, for one part Sophocles or Seneca. In this writer's esti- 
mate of the powers of the mind, the understanding must have 
held a most tyrannical pre-eminence. Whether we look into 
his plays, or his most passionate love-poems, we shall find all lo 
frozen and made rigid with intellect. The finest movements of 
the human heart, the utmost grandeur of which the soul is 
capable, are essentially comprised in the actions and speeches 
of Cselica and Camena. Shakespeare, who seems to have had 
a peculiar delight in contemplating womanly perfection, whom 1 5 
for his many sweet images of female excellence all women are 
in an especial manner bound to love, has not raised the ideal 
of the female character higher than Lord Brooke, in these two 
women, has done. But it requires a study equivalent to the 
learning of a new language to understand their meaning when 20 
they speak. It is indeed hard to hit : 

Much like thy riddle, Samson, in one day 
Or seven though one should musing sit. 

It is as if a being of pure intellect should take upon him to 
express the emotions of our sensitive natures. There would 25 
be all knowledge, but sympathetic expressions would be 
wanting. 



28o ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 

BEN JONSON 

The Case is Altered. — The passion for wealth has worn out 
much of its grossness in tract of time. Our ancestors certainly- 
conceived of money as able to confer a distinct gratification 
in itself, not considered simply as a symbol of wealth. The 

5 old poets, when they introduce a miser, make him address 
his gold as his mistress ; as something to be seen, felt, and 
hugged ; as capable of satisfying two of the senses at least. 
The substitution of a thin, unsatisfying medium in the place 
of the good old tangible metal, has made avarice quite a 

10 Platonic affection in comparison with the seeing, touching, 
and handling-pleasures of the old Chrysophilites. A bank- 
note can no more satisfy the touch of a true sensualist in this 
passion, than Creusa could return her husband's embrace in the 
shades. See the Cave of Mammon in Spenser; Barabas's 

15 contemplation of his wealth in the Rich Jew of Malta; Luke's 
raptures in the City Madam ; the idolatry and absolute gold- 
worship of the miser Jaques in this early comic production 
of Ben Jonson's. Above all hear Guzman, in that excellent 
old translation of the Spanish Rogue, expatiate on the " ruddy 

20 cheeks of your golden ruddocks, your Spanish pistolets, your 
plump and full-faced Portuguese, and your clear-skinned pieces 
of eight of Castile," which he and his fellows the beggars kept 
secret to themselves, and did privately enjoy in a plentiful 
manner. " For to have them, to pay them away, is not to enjoy 

25 them ; to enjoy them, is to have them lying by us ; having no 
other need of them than to use them for the clearing of the 
eye-sight, and the comforting of our senses. These we did 
carry about with us, sewing them in some patches of our doub- 
lets near unto the heart, and as close to the skin as we could 

30 handsomely quilt them in, holding them to be restorative." 
Poetaster. — This Roman play seems written to confute those 
enemies of Ben in his own days and ours, who have said that 



ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 28 1 

he made a pedantical use of his learning. He has here revived 
the whole Court of Augustus, by a learned spell. We are 
admitted to the society of the illustrious dead. Virgil, 
Horace, Ovid, Tibullus, converse in our own tongue more 
finely and poetically than they were used to express them- 5 
selves in their native Latin. Nothing can be imagined more 
elegant, refined, and court-like, than the scenes between this 
Louis the Fourteenth of antiquity and his hterati. The whole 
essence and secret of that kind of intercourse is contained 
therein. The economical liberahty by which greatness, seem- 10 
ing to waive some part of its prerogative, takes care to lose 
none of the essentials ; the prudential liberties of an inferior, 
which flatter by commanded boldness and soothe with com- 
plimentary sincerity. These, and a thousand beautiful pas- 
sages from his New Inn, his Cynthia's Revels, and from those 15 
numerous court-masques and entertainments which he was in 
the daily habit of furnishing, might be adduced to show the 
poetical fancy and elegance of mind of the supposed rugged 
old bard. 

Alchemist. — The judgment is perfectly overwhelmed by the 20 
torrent of images, words, and book-knowledge, with which 
Epicure Mammon (Act 2, Scene 2) confounds and stuns his 
incredulous hearer. They come pouring out like the succes- 
sive falls of Nilus. They " doubly redouble strokes upon the 
foe." Description outstrides proof. We are made to believe 25 
effects before we have testimony for their causes. If there is 
no one image which attains the height of the sublime, yet the 
confluence and assemblage of them all produces a result equal 
to the grandest poetry. The huge Xerxean army countervails 
against single Achilles. Epicure Mammon is the most deter- 30 
mined offspring of its author. It has the whole " matter and 
copy of the father — eye, nose, lip, the trick of his frown." 
It is just such a swaggerer as contemporaries have described 
old Ben to be. Meercraft, Bobadil, the Host of the New Inn, 



282 ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 

have all his image and superscription. But Mammon is arro- 
gant pretension personified. Sir Samson Legend, in Love for 
Love, is such another lying, overbearing character, but he 
does not come up to Epicure Mammon. What a " towering 
5 bravery " there is in his sensuality ! he affects no pleasure 
under a Sultan. It is as if " Egypt with Assyria strove in 
luxury." 

GEORGE CHAPMAN 

Bussy D^ A7nbois, Byroii's Conspiracy^ Byron^s Tragedy^ 
&'C.^ &=€. — Webster has happily characterized the "full and 

10 heightened style " of Chapman, who, of all the English play- 
writers, perhaps approaches nearest to Shakespeare in the 
descriptive and didactic, in passages which are less purely 
dramatic. Dramatic imitation was not his talent. He could 
not go out of himself, as Shakespeare could shift at pleasure, to 

15 inform and animate other existences, but in himself he had an 
eye to perceive and a soul to embrace all forms and modes of 
being. He would have made a great epic poet, if indeed he 
has not abundantly shown himself to be one ; for his Homer 
is not so properly a translation as the stories of Achilles and 

20 Ulysses re-written. The earnestness and passion which he 
has put into every part of these poems, would be incredible 
to a reader of mere modern translations. His almost Greek 
zeal for the glory of his heroes can only be paralleled by that 
fierce spirit of Hebrew bigotry, with which Milton, as if per- 

25 sonating one of the zealots of the old law, clothed himself 
when he sat down to paint the acts of Samson against the 
uncircumcised. The great obstacle to Chapman's translations 
being read, is their unconquerable quaintness. He pours out 
in the same breath the most just and natural, and the most 

30 violent and crude expressions. He seems to grasp at what- 
ever words come first to hand while the enthusiasm is upon 
him, as if all other must be inadequate to the divine meaning. 



ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 283 

But passion (the all in all in poetry) is everywhere present, 
raising the low, dignifying the mean, and putting sense into 
the absurd. He makes his readers glow, weep, tremble, take 
any affection which he pleases, be moved by words, or in 
spite of them, be disgusted and overcome their disgust. s 

I have often thought that the vulgar misconception of 
Shakespeare, as of a wild irregular genius " in whom great 
faults are compensated by great beauties," would be really 
true, applied to Chapman. But there is no scale by which 
to balance such disproportionate subjects as the faults and 10 
beauties of a great genius. To set off the former with any 
fairness against the latter, the pain which they give us should 
be in some proportion to the pleasure which we receive from 
the other. As these transport us to the highest heaven, those 
should steep us in agonies infernal. 15 

Bussy D^Ambois. — This calling upon Light and Darkness 
for information, but, above all, the description of the Spirit 

— "Threw his changed countenance headlong into clouds" 

— is tremendous, to the curdling of the blood. I know 
nothing in Poetry like it. 20 

FRANCIS BEAUMONT — JOHN FLETCHER 

Maid^s Tragedy. — One characteristic of the excellent old 
poets is, their being able to bestow grace upon subjects which 
naturally do not seem susceptible of any. I will mention two 
instances. Zelmane in the Arcadia of Sidney, and Helena 
in the All's Well that Ends Well of Shakespeare. What can 25 
be more unpromising at first sight, than the idea of a young 
man disguising himself in woman's attire, and passing himself 
off for a woman among women ; and that for a long space of 
time? Yet Sir Philip has preserved so matchless a decorum, 
that neither does Pyrocles' manhood suffer any stain for the 30 
effeminacy of Zelmane, nor is the respect due to the princesses 



284 ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 

at all diminished when the deception comes to be known. In 
the sweetly constituted mind of Sir Philip Sidney, it seems as 
if no ugly thought or unhandsome meditation could find a 
harbour. He turned all that he touched into images of 
5 honour and virtue. Helena in Shakespeare is a young woman 
seeking a man in marriage. The ordinary rules of courtship 
are reversed, the habitual feelings are crossed. Yet with such 
exquisite address this dangerous subject is handled, that 
Helena's forwardness loses her no honour ; delicacy dispenses 

10 with its laws in her favour, and nature, in her single case, 
seems content to suffer a sweet violation. Aspatia, in the 
Maid's Tragedy, is a character equally difficult, with Helena, 
of being managed with grace. She too is a slighted woman, 
refused by the man who had once engaged to marry her. Yet 

15 it is artfully contrived, that while we pity we respect her, and 
she descends without degradation. Such wonders true poetry 
and passion can do, to confer dignity upon subjects which do 
not seem capable of it. But Aspatia must not be compared 
at all points with Helena ; she does not so absolutely predomi- 

20 nate over her situation but she suffers some diminution, some 
abatement of the full lustre of the female character, which 
Helena never does. Her character has many degrees of 
sweetness, some of delicacy; but it has weakness, which, if 
we do not despise, we are sorry for. After all, Beaumont and 

25 Fletcher were but an inferior sort of Shakespeares and Sidneys. 

Fhilaster. — The character of Bellario must have been 

extremely popular in its day. For many years after the date 

of Philaster's first exhibition on the stage, scarce a play can be 

found without one of these women pages in it, following in the 

30 train of some pre-engaged lover, calling on the gods to bless 
her happy rival (his mistress), whom no doubt she secretly 
curses in her heart, giving rise to many pretty equivoques by 
the way on the confusion of sex, and either made happy at 
last by some surprising turn of fate, or dismissed with the 



ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 285 

joint pity of the lovers and the audience. Donne has a copy 
of verses to his mistress, dissuading her from a resolution 
which she seems to have taken up from some of these scenical 
representations, of following him abroad as a page. It is so 
earnest, so weighty, so rich in poetry, in sense, in wit, and 5 
pathos, that it deserves to be read as a solemn close in future 
to all such sickly fancies as he there deprecates. 

JOHN FLETCHER 

Thierry and Theodoret. — The scene where Ordella offers 
her Hfe a sacrifice, that the King of France may not be child- 
less, I have always considered as the finest in all Fletcher, and 10 
Ordella to be the most perfect notion of the female heroic 
character, next to Calantha in the Broken Heart. She is a 
piece of sainted nature. Yet noble as the whole passage is, it 
must be confessed that the manner of it, compared with 
Shakespeare's finest scenes, is faint and languid. Its motion 15 
is circular, not progressive. Each line revolves on itself in a 
sort of separate orbit. They do not join into one another 
like a running-hand. Fletcher's ideas moved slow; his versi- 
fication, though sweet, is tedious, it stops at every turn ; he 
lays line upon line, making up one after the other, adding 20 
image to image so deliberately, that we see their junctures. 
Shakespeare mingles everything, runs line into line, embar- 
rasses sentences and metaphors ; before one idea has burst 
its shell, another is hatched and clamorous for disclosure. 
Another striking difference between Fletcher and Shakespeare, 25 
is the fondness of the former for unnatural and violent situa- 
tions. He seems to have thought that nothing great could be 
produced in an ordinary way. The chief incidents in some 
of his most admired tragedies show this.-"^ Shakespeare had 
nothing of this contortion in his mind, none of that craving 30 
1 Wife for a Month, Cupid's Revenge, Double Marriage, &c. 



286 ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 

after violent situations, and flights of strained and improbable 
virtue, which I think always betrays an imperfect moral sensibil- 
ity. The wit of Fletcher is excellent ^ like his serious scenes, but 
there is something strained and far-fetched in both. He is too 
5 mistrustful of Nature, he always goes a little on one side of her. 
Shakespeare chose her without a reserve : and had riches, power, 
understanding, and length of days, with her, for a dowry. 

Love's Pilgrimage. — The dialogue between Philippo and 
Leocadia is one of the most pleasing if not the most shining 

lo scenes in Fletcher. All is sweet, natural, and unforced. It is 
a copy which we may suppose Massinger to have profited by 
the studying. 

The Two Noble Kinsmen. — The scene in which Palamon 
and Arcite repining at their hard condition, in being made 

15 captives for life in Athens, derive consolation from the enjoy- 
ment of each other's company in prison, bears indubitable 
marks of Fletcher : the two which precede it give strong 
countenance to the tradition that Shakespeare had a hand in 
this play. The same judgment may be formed of the death of 

20 Arcite and some other passages, not here given. They have 
a luxuriance in them which strongly resembles Shakespeare's 
manner in those parts of his plays where, the progress of the 
interest being subordinate, the poet was at leisure for descrip- 
tion. I might fetch instances from Troilus and Timon. That 

25 Fletcher should have copied Shakespeare's manner through so 
many entire scenes (which is the theory of Mr. Steevens) is 
not very probable ; that he could have done it with such 
facihty is to me not certain. If Fletcher wrote some scenes in 
imitation, why did he stop? or shall we say that Shakespeare 

30 wrote the other scenes in imitation of Fletcher ? that he gave 
Shakespeare a curb and a bridle, and that Shakespeare gave 
him a pair of spurs : as Blackmore and Lucan are brought in 
exchanging gifts in the Battle of the Books ? 

1 Wit without Money, and his comedies generally. 



ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 28/ 

Faithful Shepherdess. — If all the parts of this delightful 
pastoral had been in unison with its many innocent scenes 
and sweet lyric intermixtures, it had been a poem fit to vie 
with Comus or the Arcadia, to have been put into the hands 
of boys and virgins, to have made matter for young dreams, 5 
like the loves of Hermia and Lysander. But a spot is on the 
face of this Diana. Nothing short of infatuation could have 
driven Fletcher upon mixing with this "blessedness" such an 
ugly deformity as Cloe, the wanton shepherdess ! Coarse words 
do but wound the ears ; but a character of lewdness affronts the 10 
mind. Female lewdness at once shocks nature and morality. 
If Cloe was meant to set off Clorin by contrast, Fletcher should 
have known that such weeds -by juxtaposition do not set off 
but kill sweet flowers. 

FRANCIS BEAUMONT 

The Triumph of Love: Being the second of four plays ^ or 15 
moral representations^ in one. — Violanta, Daughter to a Noble- 
man of Milan, is with child by Gerrard, supposed to be of 
mean descent : an offence which by the laws of Milan is made 
capital to both parties. 

Violanta's prattle is so very pretty and so natural in her 20 
situation, that I could not resist giving it a place. Juno Lucina 
was never invoked with more elegance. Pope has been praised 
for giving dignity to a game of cards. It required at least as 
much address to ennoble a lying-in. 

PHILIP MASSINGER —THOMAS DEKKER 

The Virgin Martyr. — This play has some beauties of so 25 
very high an order, that with all my respect for Massinger, I 
do not think he had poetical enthusiasm capable of rising up 
to them. His associate Dekker, who wrote Old Fortunatus, 



288 ON ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER DRAMATISTS 

had poetry enough for anything. The very impurities which 
obtrude themselves among the sweet pieties of this play, like 
Satan among the Sons of Heaven, have a strength of contrast, 
a raciness, and a glow in them, which are beyond Massinger. 
5 They are to the religion of the rest what Caliban is to Miranda. 

PHILIP MASSINGER 

The City Madam. — This bitter satire against the city women 
for aping the fashions of the court ladies must have been pecul- 
iarly gratifying to the females of the Herbert family and the 
rest of Massinger's noble patrons and patronesses. 

lo The Picture. — The good sense, rational fondness, and 
chastised feeling, of the dialogue in which Matthias, a knight 
of Bohemia, going to the wars, in parting with his wife, shows 
her substantial reasons why he should go — make it more 
valuable than many of those scenes in which this writer has 

15 attempted a deeper passion and more tragical interest. Mas- 
singer had not the higher requisites of his art in anything like 
the degree in which they were possessed by Ford, Webster, 
Tourneur, Heywood, and others. He never shakes or disturbs 
the mind with grief. He is read with composure and placid 

20 delight. He wrote with that equability of all the passions, 
which made his Enghsh style the purest and most free from 
violent metaphors and harsh constructions, of any of the 
dramatists who were his contemporaries. 

PHILIP MASSINGER —THOMAS MIDDLETON — 
WILLIAM ROWLEY 

Old Law. — There is an exquisiteness of moral sensibility, 

25 making one's eyes to gush out tears of delight, and a poetical 

strangeness in the circumstances of this sweet tragi-comedy, 

which are unlike anything in the dramas which Massinger 



GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 289 

wrote alone. The pathos is of a subtler edge. Middle ton 
and Rowley, who assisted in it, had both of them finer geniuses 
than their associate. 

JAMES SHIRLEY 

Claims a place amongst the worthies of this period, not so 
much for any transcendent talent in himself, as that he was 5 
the last of a great race, all of whom spoke nearly the same 
language, and had a set of moral feelings and notions in 
common. A new language, and quite a new turn of tragic 
and comic interest, came in with the Restoration. 

The Lady of Pleasure. — The dialogue between Sir Thomas 10 
Bornewell and his lady Aretina is in the very spirit of the 
recriminating scenes between Lord and Lady Townley in the 
Provoked Husband. It is difficult to believe but it must have 
been Vanbrugh's prototype. 



XXXVI. ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER 

OF HOGARTH 

WITH SOME REMARKS ON A PASSAGE IN THE WRITINGS OF 

THE LATE MR. BARRY 

One of the earliest and noblest enjoyments I had when a boy 15 
was in the contemplation of those capital prints by Hogarth, 
the Harlofs and Rake's Progresses, which, along with some 
others, hung upon the walls of a great hall in an old-fashioned 

house in shire, and seemed the solitary tenants (with myself) 

of that antiquated and life-deserted apartment. 20 

Recollection of the manner in which those prints used to 
affect me, has often made me wonder, when I have heard 
Hogarth described as a mere comic painter, as one whose chief 



290 GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 

ambition was to raise a laugh. To deny that there are through- 
out the prints which I have mentioned circumstances introduced 
of a laughable tendency, would be to run counter to the com- 
mon notions of mankind ; but to suppose that in their ruling 
5 character they appeal chiefly to the risible faculty, and not first 
and foremost to the very heart of man, its best and most serious 
feelings, would be to mistake no less grossly their aim and pur- 
pose. A set of severer Satires (for they are not so much Come- 
dies, which they have been likened to, as they are strong and 

10 masculine Satires) less mingled with anything of mere fun, 
were never written upon paper, or graven upon copper. They 
resemble Juvenal, or the satiric touches in Timon of Athens. 

I was pleased with the reply of a gentleman, who being 
asked which book he esteemed most in his library, answered, 

15 — "Shakespeare : " being asked which he esteemed next best, 

replied, — "Hogarth." His graphic representations are indeed 

books : they have the teeming, fruitful, suggestive meaning of 

words. Other pictures we look at, — his prints we read. 

In pursuance of this parallel, I have sometimes entertained 

20 myself with comparing the Timon of Athejis of Shakespeare 
(which I have just mentioned) and Hogarth's Rakers Progress 
together. The story, the moral, in both is nearly the same. 
The wild course of riot and extravagance, ending in the one 
with driving the Prodigal from the society of men into the soli- 

25 tude of the deserts, and in the other with conducting the Rake 
through his several stages of dissipation into the still more 
complete desolations of the mad-house, in the play and in 
the picture are described with almost equal force and nature. 
The levee of the Rake, which forms the subject of the second 

30 plate in the series, is almost a transcript of Timon's levee in 
the opening scene of that play. We find a dedicating poet, 
and other similar characters, in both. 

The concluding scene in the Rake's Progress is perhaps 
superior to the last scenes of Timon. If we seek for something 



GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 29 1 

of kindred excellence in poetry, it must be in the scenes of 
Lear's beginning madness, where the King and the Fool and 
the Tom-o'-Bedlam conspire to produce such a medley of mirth 
checked by misery, and misery rebuked by mirth ; where the 
society of those " strange bed-fellows " which misfortunes have 5 
brought Lear acquainted with, so finely sets forth the destitute 
state of the monarch, while the lunatic bans of the one, and 
the disjointed sayings and wild but pregnant allusions of the 
other, so wonderfully sympathize with that confusion, which 
they seem to assist in the production of, in the senses of that 10 
"child-changed father." 

In the scene in Bedlam, which terminates the Rakers Prog- 
ress, we find the same assortment of the ludicrous with the 
terrible. Here is desperate madness, the overturning of origi- 
nally strong thinking faculties, at which we shudder, as we 15 
contemplate the duration and pressure of affliction which it 
must have asked to destroy such a building ; — and here is the 
gradual hurtless lapse into idiocy, of faculties which at their 
best of times never having been strong, we look upon the con- 
summation of their decay with no more of pity than is consist- 20 
ent with a smik. The mad tailor, the poor driveller, that has 
gone out of his wits (and truly he appears to have had no great 
journey to go to get past their confines) for the love of Charmifig 
Betty Careless, — these half-laughable, scarce-pitiable objects 
take off from the horror which the principal figure would of 25 
itself raise, at the same time that they assist the feeling of the 
scene by contributing to the general notion of its subject. 

Is it carrying the spirit of comparison to excess to remark, 
that in the poor kneeling weeping female, who accompanies 
her seducer in his sad decay, there is something analogous to 30 
Kent or Caius, as he delights rather to be called, in Lear, — 
the noblest pattern of virtue which even Shakespeare has con- 
ceived, — who follows his royal master in banishment that had 
pronounced his banishment, and forgetful at once of his wrongs 



292 GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 

and dignities, taking on himself the disguise of a menial, retains 
his fidelity to the figure, his loyalty to the carcass, the shadow, 
the shell and empty husk of Lear ? 

In the perusal of a book, or of a picture, much of the impres- 
5 sion which we receive depends upon the habit of mind which 
we bring with us to such perusal. The same circumstance 
may make one person laugh, which shall render another very 
serious ; or in the same person the first impression may be 
corrected by after-thought. The misemployed incongruous 

10 characters of the Harlofs Funeral^ on a superficial inspec- 
tion, provoke to laughter; but when we have sacrificed the 
first emotion to levity, a very different frame of mind succeeds, 
or the painter has lost half his purpose. I never look at that 
wonderful assemblage of depraved beings, who, without a grain 

1 5 of reverence or pity in their perverted minds, are performing 
the sacred exteriors of duty to the relics of their departed 
partner in folly, but I am as much moved to sympathy from 
the very want of it in them, as I should be by the finest repre- 
sentation of a virtuous death-bed surrounded by real mourners, 

20 pious children, weeping friends, — perhaps more by the very 
contrast. What reflections does it not awake, of the dreadful 
heartless state in which the creature (a female, too) must have 
lived, who in death wants the accompaniment of one genuine 
tear. That wretch who is removing the lid of the cofiin to 

25 gaze upon the corpse with a face which indicates a perfect 
negation of all goodness or womanhood — the hypocrite par- 
son and his demure partner — all the fiendish group — to a 
thoughtful mind present a moral emblem more affecting than 
if the poor friendless carcass had been depicted as thrown out 

30 to the woods, where wolves had assisted at its obsequies, itself 
furnishing forth its own funeral banquet. 

It is easy to laugh at such incongruities as are met together 
in this picture, — incongruous objects being of the very essence 
of laughter, — but surely the laugh is far different in its kind 



GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 293 

from that thoughtless species to which we are moved by mere 
farce and grotesque. We laugh when Ferdinand Count Fathom, 
at the first sight of the white cliffs of Britain, feels his heart 
yearn with filial fondness towards the land of his progenitors, 
which he is coming to fleece and plunder, — we smile at the 5 
exquisite irony of the passage, — but if we are not led on by 
such passages to some more salutary feeling than laughter, we 
are very negligent perusers of them in book or picture. 

It is the fashion with those who cry up the great Historical 
School in this country, at the head of which Sir Joshua Rey- 10 
nolds is placed, to exclude Hogarth from that school, as an 
artist of an inferior and vulgar class. Those persons seem to 
me to confound the painting of subjects in common or vulgar 
life with the being a vulgar artist. The quantity of thought 
which Hogarth crowds into every picture, would alone tmvul-,is 
garize every subject which he might choose. Let us take the 
lowest of his subjects, the print called Gin Lane. Here is 
plenty of poverty and low stuff to disgust upon a superficial 
view; and accordingly, a cold spectator feels himself imme- 
diately disgusted and repelled. I have seen many turn away 20 
from it, not being able to bear it. The same persons would 
perhaps have looked with great complacency upon Poussin's 
celebrated picture of the Plague at Atheiis} Disease and 
Death and bewildering Terror, in Atheniafi garments are 
endurable, and come, as the delicate critics express it, within 25 
the " limits of pleasurable sensation." But the scenes of their 
own St. Giles's, delineated by their own countryman, are too 
shocking to think of. Yet if we could abstract our minds from 
the fascinating colours of the picture, and forget the coarse 
execution (in some respects) of the print, intended as it was to 30 
be a cheap plate, accessible to the poorer sort of people, for 
whose instruction it was done, I think we could have no hesita- 
tion in conferring the palm of superior genius upon Hogarth, 
1 At the late Mr. Hope's, in Cavendish Square. 



294 GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 

comparing this work of his with Poussin's picture. There is 
more of imagination in it — that power which draws all things 
to one, — - which makes things animate and inanimate, beings 
with their attributes, subjects and their accessaries, take one 
5 colour, and serve to one effect. Everything in the print, to 
use a vulgar expression, tells. Every part is full of " strange 
images of death." It is perfectly amazing and astounding to 
look at. Not only the two prominent figures, the woman and 
the half-dead man, which are as terrible as anything which 

10 Michael Angelo ever drew, but everything else in the print 
contributes to bewilder and stupefy, — the very houses, as I 
heard a friend of mine express it, tumbling all about in various 
directions, seem drunk — seem absolutely reeling from the effect 
of that diabolical spirit of frenzy which goes forth over the whole 

i5*composition. — To show the poetical and almost prophetical 
conception in the artist, one little circumstance may serve. 
Not content with the dying and dead figures, which he has 
strewed in profusion over the proper scene of the action, he 
shows you what (of a kindred nature) is passing beyond it. 

20 Close by the shell, in which, by direction of the parish beadle, 
a man is depositing his wife, is an old wall, which, partaking of 
the universal decay around it, is tumbling to pieces. Through 
a gap in this wall are seen three figures, which appear to make 
a part in some funeral procession which is passing by on the 

25 other side of the wall, out of the sphere of the composition. 
This extending of the interest beyond the bounds of the sub- 
ject could only have been conceived by a great genius. Shake- 
speare, in his description of the painting of the Trojan War, 
in his Tarquin and Lucrece^ has introduced a similar device, 

30 where the painter made a part stand for the whole : — 

For much imaginary work was there, 
Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind, 
That for Achilles' image stood his spear, 
Griped in an armed hand ; himself behind 



GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 295 

Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind : 
A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head, 
Stood for the whole to be imagined. 

This he well calls imaginary work, where the spectator must 
meet the artist in his conceptions half way ; and it is peculiar 5 
to the confidence of high genius alone to trust so much to 
spectators or readers. Lesser artists show everything distinct 
and full, as they require an object to be made out to themselves 
before they can comprehend it. 

When I think of the power displayed in this (I will not 10 
hesitate to say) sublime print, it seems to me the extreme 
narrowness of system alone, and of that rage for classification, 
by which in matters of taste at least, we are perpetually per- 
plexing instead of arranging our ideas, that would make us 
concede to the work of Poussin above-mentioned, and deny 15 
to this of Hogarth, the name of a grand serious composition. 

We are for ever deceiving ourselves with names and theories. 
We call one man a great historical painter, because he has 
taken for his subjects kings or great men, or transactions over 
which time has thrown a grandeur. We term another the 20 
painter of common life, and set him down in our minds for an 
artist of an inferior class, without reflecting whether the quantity 
of thought shown by the latter may not much more than level 
the distinction which their mere choice of subjects may seem to 
place between them ; or whether, in fact, from that very com- 25 
mon life a great artist may not extract as deep an interest as 
another man from that which we are pleased to call history. 

I entertain the highest respect for the talents and virtues of 
Reynolds, but I do not like that his reputation should over- 
shadow and stifle the merits of such a man as Hogarth, nor 30 
that to mere names and classifications we should be content 
to sacrifice one of the greatest ornaments of England. 

I would ask the most enthusiastic admirer of Reynolds, 
whether in the countenances of his Staring and Grinning 



296 GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 

Despair, which he has given us for the faces of Ugohno and 
dying Beaufort, there be anything comparable to the expression 
which Hogarth has put into the face of his broken-down rake 
in the last plate but one of the Rake's Progress^ where a 

5 letter from the manager is brought to him to say that his play 
"will not do"? Here all is easy, natural, undistorted, but 
withal what a mass of woe is here accumulated ! — the long 
history of a mis-spent life is compressed into the countenance 
as plainly as the series of plates before had told it ; here is no 

10 attempt at Gorgonian looks which are to freeze the beholder, 
no grinning at the antique bed-posts, no face-making, or con- 
sciousness of the presence of spectators in or out of the picture, 
but grief kept to a man's self, a face retiring from notice with 
the shame which great anguish sometimes brings with it, — a 

1 5 final leave taken of hope, — the coming on of vacancy and 
stupefaction, — a beginning alienation of mind looking like 
tranquillity. Here is matter for the mind of the beholder to 
feed on for the hour together, — matter to feed and fertilize the 
mind. It is too real to admit one thought about the power 

20 of the artist who did it. — When we compare the expression 
in subjects which so fairly admit of comparison, and find the 
superiority so clearly to remain with Hogarth, shall the mere 
contemptible difference of the scene of it being laid in the one 
case in our Fleet or King's Bench Prison, and in the other in 

25 the State Prison of Pisa, or the bedroom of a cardinal, — or 
that the subject of the one has never been authenticated, and 
the other is matter of history, — so weigh down the real points 
of the comparison, as to induce us to rank the artist who has 
chosen the one scene or subject (though confessedly inferior 

30 in that which constitutes the soul of his art) in a class from 

1 The first perhaps in all Hogarth for serious expression. That which 
comes next to it, I think, is the jaded morning countenance of the debau- 
chee in the second plate of the Marriage a-la-mode, which lectures on the 
vanity of pleasure as audibly as anything in Ecclesiastes. 



GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 297 

which we exclude the better genius (who has happened to 
make choice of the other) with something hke disgrace ? ^ 

The Boys u?tder Demoniacal Fossessmt of Raphael and 
Dominichino, by what law of classification are we bound to 
assign them to belong to the great style in painting, and to 5 
degrade into an inferior class the Rake of Hogarth when he 
is the Madman in the Bedlam scene? I am sure he is far 
more impressive than either. It is a face which no one that 
has seen can easily forget. There is the stretch of human 
suffering to the utmost endurance, severe bodily pain brought 10 
on by strong mental agony, the frightful obstinate laugh of 
madness, — yet all so unforced and natural, that those who 
never were witness to madness in real life, think they see 
nothing but what is familiar to them in this face. Here are 
no tricks of distortion, nothing but the natural face of agony. 15 
This is high tragic painting, and we might as well deny to 
Shakespeare the honours of a great tragedian, because he has 

1 Sir Joshua Reynolds, somewhere in his lectures, speaks of the pre- 
sumption of Hogarth in attempting the grand style in painting, by 
which he means his choice of certain Scripture subjects. Hogarth's 
excursions into Holy Land were not very numerous, but what he has 
left us in this kind have at least this merit, that they have expression 
of some sort or other in them, — the Child Moses before Pharaoh^ s 
Daughter, for instance : which is more than can be said of Sir Joshua 
Reynolds's Repose in Egypt, painted for Macklin's Bible, where for a 
Madonna he has substituted a sleepy, insensible, unmotherly girl, one 
so little worthy to have been selected as the Mother of the Saviour, 
that she seems to have neither heart nor feeling to entitle her to 
become a mother at all. But indeed the race of Virgin Mary painters 
seems to have been cut up, root and branch, at the Reformation. Our 
artists are too good Protestants to give life to that admirable commix- 
ture of maternal tenderness, wdth reverential awe and wonder approach- 
ing to worship, with which the Virgin Mothers of L. da Vinci and 
Raphael (themselves by their divine countenances inviting men to 
worship) contemplate the union of the two natures in the person of 
their Heaven-born Infant. 



298 GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 

interwoven scenes of mirth with the serious business of his 
plays, as refuse to Hogarth the same praise for the two con- 
cluding scenes of the Rake's Progress, because of the Comic 
Lunatics which he has thrown into the one, or the Alchymist 
5 that he has introduced in the other, who is paddling in the 
coals of his furnace, keeping alive the flames of vain hope 
within the very walls of the prison to which the vanity has 
conducted him, which have taught the darker lesson of extin- 
guished hope to the desponding figure who is the principal 

10 person of the scene. 

It is the force of these kindly admixtures which assimilates 
the scenes of Hogarth and of Shakespeare to the drama of 
real life, where no such thing as pure tragedy is to be found ; 
but merriment and infelicity, ponderous crime and feather- 

15 light vanity, like twi- formed births, disagreeing complexions 
of one intertexture, perpetually unite to show forth motley 
spectacles to the world. Then it is that the poet or painter 
shows his art, when in the selection of these comic adjuncts 
he chooses such circumstances as shall relieve, contrast with, 

20 or fall into, without forming a violent opposition to, his prin- 
cipal object. Who sees not that the Grave-digger in Hamlet, 
the Fool in Lear, have a kind of correspondency to, and fall 
in with, the subjects which they seem to interrupt, while the 
comic stuff in Venice Preserved, and the doggerel nonsense of 

25 the Cook and his poisoning associates in the Rollo of Beau- 
mont and Fletcher, are pure, irrelevant, impertinent discords, 
— as bad as the quarrelling dog and cat under the table of 
the Lord and the Disciples at Eimnaiis of Titian? 

Not to tire the reader with perpetual reference to prints 

30 which he may not be fortunate enough to possess, it may be 
sufficient to remark, that the same tragic cast of expression 
and incident, blended in some instances with a greater alloy 
of comedy, characterizes his other great work, the Marriage 
d-la-mode, as well as those less elaborate exertions of his genius. 



GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 299 

the prints called Bidustry and Idleness^ the Distressed Poet^ &c., 
forming, with the Harlofs and Rake's Progresses^ the most con- 
siderable if not the largest class of his productions, — enough 
surely to rescue Hogarth from the imputation of being a mere 
buffoon, or one whose general aim was only to shake the sides. 5 

There remains a very numerous class of his performances, 
the object of which must be confessed to be principally comic. 
But in all of them will be found something to distinguish them 
from the droll productions of Bunbury and others. They have 
this difference, that we do not merely laugh at, we are led 10 
into long trains of reflection by them. In this respect they 
resemble the characters of Chaucer's Pilgrims, which have 
strokes of humour in them enough to designate them for the 
most part as comic, but our strongest feeling still is wonder at 
the comprehensiveness of genius which could crowd, as poet 15 
and painter have done, into one small canvas so many diverse 
yet co-operating materials. 

The faces of Hogarth have not a mere momentary interest, 
as in caricatures, or those grotesque physiognomies which we 
sometimes catch a glance of in the street, and, struck with 20 
their whimsicality, wish for a pencil and the power to sketch 
them down ; and forget them again as rapidly, — but they are 
permanent abiding ideas. Not the sports of nature, but her 
necessary eternal classes. We feel that we cannot part with 
any of them, lest a link should be broken. 25 

It is worthy of observation, that he has seldom drawn a 
mean or insignificant countenance.-^ Hogarth's mind was 

1 If there are any of that description, they are in his Strolling 
Players, a print which has been cried up by Lord Orford as the richest 
of his productions, and it may be, for what I know, in the mere lumber, 
the properties, and dead furniture of the scene, but in living character 
and expression it is (for Hogarth) lamentably poor and wanting; it is 
perhaps the only one of his performances at which we have a right to 
feel disgusted. 



300 GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 

eminently reflective ; and, as it has been well observed of 
Shakespeare, that he has transfused his own poetical charac- 
ter into the persons of his drama (they are all more or less 
poets), Hogarth has impressed a thinking character upon the 
5 persons of his canvas. This remark must not be taken univer- 
sally. The exquisite idiotism of the httle gentleman in the 
bag and sword beating his drum in the print of the Enraged 
Musician, would of itself rise up against so sweeping an asser- 
tion. But I think it will be found to be true of the generality 

10 of his countenances. The knife-grinder and Jew flute-player 
in the plate just mentioned may serve as instances instead of 
a thousand. They have intense thinking faces, though the 
purpose to which they are subservient by no means required 
it j but indeed it seems as if it was painful to Hogarth to 

15 contemplate mere vacancy or insignificance. 

This reflection of the artist's own intellect from the faces 
of his characters, is one reason why the works of Hogarth, so 
much more than those of any other artist, are objects of medi- 
tation. Our intellectual natures love the mirror which gives 

20 them back their own likenesses. The mental eye will not 
bend long with delight upon vacancy. 

Another line of eternal separation between Hogarth and 
the common painters of droll or burlesque subjects, with 
whom he is often confounded, is the sense of beauty, which 

25 in the most unpromising subjects seems never wholly to have 
deserted him. " Hogarth himself," says Mr. Coleridge,^ from 
whom I have borrowed this observation, speaking of a scene 
which took place at Ratzeburg, " never drew a more ludicrous 
distortion, both of attitude and physiognomy, than this effect 

30 occasioned : nor was there wanting beside it one of those 
beautiful female faces which the same Hogarth, in whom the 
satirist never extinguished that love of beauty which belonged 
to him as a poet, so often and so gladly introduces as the 

i The Friend, No. XVI. 



GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 3OI 

central figure in a crowd of humorous deformities, which 
figure (such is the power of true genius) neither acts nor is 
meant to act as a contrast ; but diffuses through all, and over 
each of the group, a spirit of reconciliation and human kind- 
ness; and even when the attention is no longer consciously 5 
directed to the cause of* this feeling, still blends its tenderness 
with our laughter : and thus prevents the instinctive merri- 
ment at the whims of nature, or the foibles or humours of our 
fellow-men, from degenerating into the heart-poison of con- 
tempt or hatred." To the beautiful females in Hogarth, 10 
which Mr. C. has pointed out, might be added, the frequent 
introduction of children (which Hogarth seems to have taken 
a particular delight in) into his pieces. They have a singular 
effect in giving tranquillity and a portion of their own inno- 
cence to the subject. The baby riding in its mother's lap 15 
in the March to Finchley (its careless innocent face placed 
directly behind the intriguing time-furrowed countenance of 
the treason-plotting French priest), perfectly sobers the whole 
of that tumultuous scene. The boy mourner winding up his 
top with so much unpretended insensibility in the plate of the 20 
Harlots Funeral (the only thing in that assembly that is not 
a hypocrite), quiets and soothes the mind that has been dis- 
turbed at the sight of so much depraved man and woman 
kind. 

I had written thus far, when I met with a passage in the 25 
writings of the late Mr. Barry, which, as it falls in with the 
vulgar notion respecting Hogarth, which this Essay has been 
employed in combating, I shall take the liberty to transcribe, 
with such remarks as may suggest themselves to me in the 
transcription; referring the reader for a full answer to that 30 
which has gone before. 

"Notwithstanding Hogarth's merit does undoubtedly entitle 
him to an honourable place among the artists, and that his little 
compositions, considered as so many dramatic representations, 



302 GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 

abounding with humour, character, and extensive observations 
on the various incidents of low, faulty, and vicious life, are 
very ingeniously brought together, and frequently tell their 
own story with more facility than is often found in many 
5 of the elevated and more noble inventions of Rafaelle, and 
other great men; yet it must be honestly confessed, that in 
what is called knowledge of the figure, foreigners have justly 
observed, that Hogarth is often so raw and unformed, as hardly 
to deserve the name of an artist. But this capital defect 

10 is not often perceivable, as examples of the naked and of 
elevated nature but rarely occur in his subjects, which are for 
the most part filled with characters, that in their nature tend 
to deformity; besides, his figures are small, and the junctures, 
and other difficulties of drawing that might occur in their 

15 limbs, are artfully concealed with their clothes, rags, &c. 
But what would atone for all his defects, even if they were 
twice told, is his admirable fund of invention, ever inexhaust- 
ible in its resources ; and his satire, which is always sharp 
and pertinent, and often highly moral, was (except in a few 

20 instances, where he weakly and meanly suffered his integrity 
to give way to his envy) seldom or never employed in a dis- 
honest or unmanly way. Hogarth has been often imitated in 
his satirical vein, sometimes in his humorous; but very few 
have attempted to rival him in his moral walk. The line of 

25 art pursued by my very ingenious predecessor and brother 
academician, Mr. Penny, is quite distinct from that of Hogarth, 
and is of a much more delicate and superior relish; he 
attempts the heart, and reaches it, whilst Hogarth's general 
aim is only to shake the sides; in other respects no compari- 

30 son can be thought of, as Mr. Penny has all that knowledge 
of the figure and academical skill, which the other wanted. 
As to Mr. Bunbury, who had so happily succeeded in the 
vein of humour and caricature, he has for some time past 
altogether relinquished it, for the more amiable pursuit of 



GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 303 

beautiful nature : this, indeed, is not to be wondered at, when 
we recollect that he has, in Mrs. Bunbury, so admirable an 
exemplar of the most finished grace and beauty continually at 
his elbow. But (to say all that occurs to me on this subject) 
perhaps it may be reasonably d'oubted, whether the being 5 
much conversant with Hogarth's method of exposing mean- 
ness, deformity, and vice, in many of his works, is not rather a 
dangerous, or, at least, a worthless pursuit ; which, if it does 
not find a false relish and a love of and search after satire and 
buffoonery in the spectator, is, at least, not unlikely to give 10 
him one. Life is short ; and the little leisure of it is much 
better laid out upon that species of art which is employed 
about the amiable and the admirable, as it is more likely to 
be attended with better and nobler consequences to ourselves. 
These two pursuits in art may be compared with two sets of 15 
people with whom we might associate ; if we give ourselves 
up to the Footes, the Kenricks, &c., we shall be continually 
busied and paddHng in whatever is ridiculous, faulty, and 
vicious in life ; whereas there are those to be found with 
whom we should be in the constant pursuit and study of all 20 
that gives a value and a dignity to human nature." [Account 
of a series of pictures in the Great Room of the Society of 
Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, at the Adelphi, by James 
Barry, R.A., Professor of Painting to the Royal Academy; 
reprinted in the last quarto edition of his Works.] 25 

" it must be honestly confessed, that in what is called 

knowledge of the figure foreigners have justly observed," &c. 

It is a secret well-known to the professors of the art and 
mystery of criticism, to insist upon what they do not find in a 
man's works, and to pass over in silence what they do. That 30 
Hogarth did not draw the naked figure so well as Michael 
Angelo, might be allowed; especially as *' examples of the 
naked," as Mr. Barry acknowledges, "rarely (he might almost 
have said never) occur in his subjects ;" and that his figures 



304 GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 

under their draperies do not discover all the fine graces of an 
Antinous or an Apollo, may be conceded likewise ; perhaps it 
was more suitable to his purpose to represent the average 
forms of mankind in the mediocrity (as Mr. Burke expresses 
5 it) of the age in which he lived : but that his figures in general, 
and in his best subjects, are so glaringly incorrect as is here 
insinuated, I dare trust my own eye so far as positively to deny 
the fact. And there is one part of the figure in which Hogarth 
is allowed to have excelled, which these foreigners seem to 

10 have overlooked, or perhaps calculating from its proportion to 
the whole (a seventh or an eighth, I forget which) deemed it 
of trifling importance ; I mean the human face ; a small part, 
reckoning by geographical inches, in the map of man's body, 
but here it is that the painter of expression must condense 

15 the wonders of his skill, even at the expense of neglecting the 
"junctures and other difficulties of drawing in the limbs," 
which it must be a cold eye that in the interest so strongly 
demanded by Hogarth's countenances has leisure to survey 
and censure. 

20 " The line of art pursued by my very ingenious predecessor 
and brother academician, Mr. Penny." 

The first impression caused in me by reading this passage, 
was an eager desire to know who this Mr. Penny was. This 
great surpasser of Hogarth in the " delicacy of his relish," and 

25 the "line which he pursued," where is he, what are his works, 
what has he to show? In vain I tried to recollect, till by 
happily putting the question to a friend who is more conver- 
sant in the works of the illustrious obscure than myself, I 
learnt that he was the painter of a Death of Wolfe which 

30 missed the prize the year that the celebrated picture of West 
on the same subject obtained it ; that he also made a picture 
of the Marquis of Graiihy relieving a Sick Soldier; moreover, 
that he was the inventor of two pictures of Suspended a?id 
Restored Animation, which I now remember to have seen in 



GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 305 

the Exhibition some years since, and the prints from which 
are still extant in good men's houses. This then, I suppose, 
is the Hne of subjects in which Mr. Penny was so much 
superior to Hogarth. I confess I am not of that opinion. 
The relieving of poverty by the purse, and the restoring a 5 
young man to his parents by using the methods prescribed by 
the Humane Society, are doubtless very amiable subjects, 
pretty things to teach the first rudiments of humanity ; they 
amount to about as much instruction as the stories of good 
boys that give away their custards to poor beggar-boys in 10 
children's books. But, good God ! is this milk for babes to be 
set up in opposition to Hogarth's moral scenes, his strong meat 
for men? As well might we prefer the fulsome verses upon 
their own goodness, to which the gentlemen of the Literary 
Fund annually sit still with such shameless patience to listen, 15 
to the satires of Juvenal and Persius : because the former are 
full of tender images of Worth relieved by Charity, and Char- 
ity stretching out her hand to rescue sinking Genius, and the 
theme of the latter is men's crimes and follies with their black 
consequences — forgetful meanwhile of those strains of moral 20 
pathos, those sublime heart-touches, which these poets (in 
them chiefly showing themselves poets) are perpetually darting 
across the otherwise appalling gloom of their subject — con- 
solatory remembrancers, when their pictures of guilty mankind 
have made us even to despair for our species, that there is 25 
such a thing as virtue and moral dignity in the world, that her 
unquenchable spark is not utterly out — -refreshing admonitions, 
to which we turn for shelter from the too great heat and 
asperity of the general satire. 

And is there nothing analogous to this in Hogarth ? nothing 30 
which "attempts and reaches the heart?" — no aim beyond 
that of "shaking the sides?" — If the kneeling ministering 
female in the last scene of the Rake's Progress, the Bedlam 
scene, of which I have spoken before, and have dared almost to 



306 GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 

parallel it with the most absolute idea of Virtue which Shake- 
speare has left us, be not enough to disprove the assertion ; if 
the sad endings of the Harlot and the Rake, the passionate 
heart-bleeding entreaties for forgiveness which the adulterous 
5 wife is pouring forth to her assassinated and dying lord in the 
last scene but one of the Marriage d-la-mode, — if these be not 
things to touch the heart, and dispose the mind to a meditative 
tenderness : is there nothing sweetly conciliatory in the mild, 
patient face and gesture with which the wife seems to allay 

10 and ventilate the feverish irritated feelings of her poor poverty- 
distracted mate (the true copy of the geftus irritabile) in the 
print of the Distressed Poet? or if an image of maternal love 
be required, where shall we find a sublimer view of it than in 
that aged woman in Industry and Idkfiess (plate V.) who is 

15 clinging with the fondness of hope not quite extinguished 
to her brutal vice-hardened child, whom she is accompanying 
to the ship which is to bear him away from his native soil, of 
which he has been adjudged unworthy ; in whose shocking face 
every trace of the human countenance seems obliterated, and 

20 a brute beast's to be left instead, shocking and repulsive to all 
but her who watched over it in its cradle before it was so sadly 
altered, and feels it must belong to her while a pulse by the 
vindictive laws of his country shall be suffered to continue to 
beat in it. Compared with such things, what is Mr. Penny's 

25 "knowledge of the figure and academical skill which Hogarth 
wanted? " 

With respect to what follows concerning another gentleman, 
with the congratulations to him on his escape out of the 
regions of " humour and caricatura," in which it appears h,e 

30 was in danger of travelling side by side with Hogarth, I can 
only congratulate my country, that Mrs. Hogarth knew her 
province better than by disturbing her husband at his palette 
to divert him from that universality of subject, which has 
stamped him perhaps, next to Shakespeare, the most inventive 



GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 307 

genius which this island has produced, into the "amiable 
pursuit of beautiful nature," i.e.^ copying ad infinitum the 
individual charms and graces of Mrs. H . 

" Hogarth's method of exposing meanness, deformity, and 
vice, paddling in whatever is ridiculous, faulty, and vicious." 5 

A person unacquainted with the works thus stigmatized, 
would be apt to imagine, that in Hogarth there was nothing 
else to be found but subjects of the coarsest and most repulsive 
nature ; that his imagination was naturally unsweet, and that 
he delighted in raking into every species of moral filth ; that 10 
he preyed upon sore places only, and took a pleasure in 
exposing the unsound and rotten parts of human nature. 
Whereas, with the exception of some of the plates of the 
Harlot's Progress, which are harder in their character than 
any of the rest of his productions (the Stages of Cruelty I omit 15 
as mere worthless caricaturas, foreign to his general habits, the 
offspring of his fancy in some wayward humour), there is scarce 
one of his pieces where vice is most strongly satirised, in which 
some figure is not introduced upon which the moral eye may 
rest satisfied ; a face that indicates goodness, or perhaps mere 20 
goodhumouredness and carelessness of mind (negation of evil) 
only, yet enough to give a relaxation to the frowning brow of 
satire, and keep the general air from tainting. Take the mild 
supplicating posture of patient poverty in the poor woman 
that is persuading the pawnbroker to accept her clothes in 25 
pledge, in the plate of Gin Lane, for an instance. A little 
does it, a little of the good nature overpowers a world of bad. 
One cordial honest laugh of a Tom Jones absolutely clears the 
atmosphere that was reeking with the black putrefying breath- 
ings of a hypocrite Bhfil. One homely expostulating shrug 30 
from Strap, warms the whole air which the suggestions of a 
gentlemanly ingratitude from his friend Random had begun to 
freeze. One "Lord bless us!" of Parson Adams upon the 
wickedness of the times, exorcises and purges off the mass of 



308 GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 

iniquity which the world-knowledge of even a Fielding could 
cull out and rake together. But of the severer class of 
Hogarth's performances, enough, I trust, has been said to 
show that they do not merely shock and repulse ; that there 

5 is in them the "scorn of vice " and the "pity" too; some- 
thing to touch the heart, and keep alive the sense of moral 
beauty ; the "lacrymge rerum," and the sorrowing by which the 
heart is made better. If they be bad things, then is satire 
and tragedy a bad thing ; let us proclaim at once an age 

10 of gold, and sink the existence of vice and misery in our 
speculations ; let us 

wink, and shut our apprehensions up 



From common sense of what men were and are : 

let us make believe with the children that everybody is good 

15 and happy, and, with Dr. Swift, write panegyrics upon the 
world. 

But that larger half of Hogarth's works which were painted 
more for entertainment than instruction (though such was the 
suggestiveness of his mind, that there is always something to 

20 be learnt from them), his humorous scenes, — are they such as 
merely to disgust and set us against our species? 

The confident assertions of such a man as I consider the 
late Mr. Barry to have been, have that weight of authority in 
them which staggers, at first hearing, even a long preconceived 

25 opinion. When I read his pathetic admonition concerning the 
shortness of life, and how much better the little leisure of it 
were laid out upon " that species of art which is employed about 
the amiable and the admirable ; " and Hogarth's " method " 
proscribed as a " dangerous or worthless pursuit," I began to 

30 think there was something in it; that I might have been 
indulging all my life a passion for the works of this artist, to 
the utter prejudice of my taste and moral sense ; but my first 
convictions gradually returned, a world of good-natured English 



GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 309 

faces came up one by one to my recollection, and a glance at 
the matchless Election Entertainment, which I have the happi- 
ness to have hanging up in my parlour, subverted Mr. Barry's 
whole theory in an instant. 

In that inimitable print (which in my judgment as far 5 
exceeds the more known and celebrated March to Finchley, as 
the best comedy exceeds the best farce that ever was written) 
let a person look till he be saturated, and when he has done 
wondering at the inventiveness of genius which could bring so 
many characters (more than thirty distinct classes of face) into 10 
a room, and set them down at table together, or otherwise 
dispose them about, in so natural a manner, engage them in 
so many easy sets and occupations, yet all partaking of the 
spirit of the occasion which brought them together, so that we 
feel that nothing but an election time could have assembled 15 
them ; having no central figure or principal group (for the 
hero of the piece, the Candidate, is properly set aside in the 
levelling indistinction of the day, one must look for him to find 
him), nothing to detain the eye from passing from part to part, 
where every part is alike instinct with Hfe, — for here are no 20 
furniture-faces, no figures brought in to fill up the scene Hke 
stage choruses, but all dramatis personse : when he shall have 
done wondering at all these faces so strongly charactered, yet 
finished with the accuracy of the finest miniature ; when he 
shall have done admiring the numberless appendages of the 25 
scene, those gratuitous doles which rich, genius flings into the 
heap when it has already done enough, the over-measure which 
it dehghts in giving, as if it felt its stores were exhaustless; 
the dumb rhetoric of the scenery — for tables, and chairs, 
and joint-stools in Hogarth, are living and significant things ; 30 
the witticisms that are expressed by words (all artists but 
Hogarth have failed when they have endeavoured to combine 
two mediums of expression, and have introduced words into 
their pictures), and the unwritten numberless little allusive 



3IO GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 

* 

pleasantries that are scattered about ; the work that is going 
on in the scene and beyond it, as is made visible to the " eye 
of mind," by the mob which chokes up the door-way, and the 
sword that has forced an entrance before its master : when he 
5 shall have sufficiently admired this wealth of genius, let him 
fairly say what is the result left on his mind. Is it an impres- 
sion of the vileness and worthlessness of his species? or is not 
the general feeling which remains, after the individual faces 
have ceased to act sensibly on his mind, a kindly one ifi favour 

10 of his species? was not the general air of the scene wholesome? 
did it do the heart hurt to be among it? Something of a 
riotous spirit to be sure is there, some worldly-mindedness in 
some of the faces, a Doddingtonian smoothness which does 
not promise any superfluous degree of sincerity in the fine 

15 gentleman who has been the occasion of calling so much good 
company together : but is not the general cast of expression in 
the faces, of the good sort? do they not seem cut out of the 
good old rock, substantial English honesty? would one fear 
treachery among characters of their expression? or shall we 

20 call their honest mirth and seldom-returning relaxation by the 
hard names of vice and profligacy? That poor country fellow, 
that is grasping his staff (which, from that difficulty of feeling 
themselves at home which poor men experience at a feast, he 
has never parted with since he came into the room), and is 

25 enjoying with a relish that seems to fit all the capacities of his 
soul the slender joke, which that facetious wag his neighbour is 
practising upon the gouty gentleman, whose eyes the effort to 
suppress pain has made as round as rings — does it shock the 
" dignity of human nature " to look at that man, and to sympa- 

30 thize with him in the seldom-heard joke which has unbent his 
care-worn hard-working visage, and drawn iron smiles from it? 
or with that full-hearted cobbler, who is honouring with the 
grasp of an honest fist the unused palm of that annoyed patri- 
cian, whom the licence of the time has seated next him? 



GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH 311 

I can see nothing "dangerous" in the contemplation of 
such scenes as this, or the En7'aged Musician, or the South- 
wark Fair, or twenty other pleasant prints which come crowd- 
ing in upon my recollection, in which the restless activities, 
the diversified bents and humours, the blameless peculiarities 5 
of men, as they deserve to be called, rather than their " vices 
and follies," are held up in a laughable point of view. All 
laughter is not of a dangerous or soul-hardening tendency. 
There is the petrifying sneer of a demon which excludes and 
kills Love, and there is the cordial laughter of a man which 10 
implies and cherishes it. What heart was ever made the worse 
by joining in a hearty laugh at the simplicities of Sir Hugh 
Evans or Parson Adams, where a sense of the ridiculous mutu- 
ally kindles and is kindled by a perception of the amiable? 
That tumultuous harmony of singers that are roaring out the 1 5 
words, "The world shall bow to the Assyrian throne," from 
the opera oi Judith, in the third plate of the series, called the 
Four Groups of Heads; which the quick eye of Hogarth must 
have struck off in the very infancy of the rage for sacred 
oratorios in this country, while "Music yet was young;" 20 
when we have done smiling at the deafening distortions, * 
which these tearers of devotion to rags and tatters, these 
takers of Heaven by storm, in their boisterous mimicry of the 
occupation of angels, are making, — what unkindly impres- 
sion is left behind, or what more of harsh or contemptuous 25 
feeling, than when we quietly leave Uncle Toby and Mr. 
Shandy riding their hobby-horses about the room? The 
conceited, long-backed Sign-painter, that with all the self- 
applause of a Raphael or Correggio (the twist of body which 
his conceit has thrown him into has something of the Correg- 30 
giesque in it) is contemplating the picture of a bottle which 
he is drawing from an actual bottle that hangs beside him, in 
the print of Beer Street, — while we smile at the enormity 
of the self-delusion, can we help loving the good-humour 



312 POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE WITHER 



* 



and self-complacency of the fellow? would we willingly wake 
him from his dream? 

I say not that all the ridiculous subjects of Hogarth have 
necessarily something in them to make us like them ; some 
5 are indifferent to us, some in their natures repulsive, and only 
made interesting by the wonderful skilj and truth to nature in 
the painter ; but I contend that there is in most of them that 
sprinkling of the better nature, which, like holy water, chases 
away and disperses the contagion of the bad. They have 

lo this in them besides, that they bring us acquainted with the 
every-day human face, — they give us skill to detect those 
gradations of sense and virtue (which escape the careless or 
fastidious observer) in the countenances of the world about 
us ; and prevent that disgust at common life, that tcedium 

15 quotidianarum formariim, which an unrestricted passion for 
ideal forms and beauties is in danger of producing. In this, 
as in many other things, they are analogous to the best novels 
of Smollett or Fielding. 



XXXVII. ON THE POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE 

WITHER 

The poems of George Wither are distinguished by a hearty 
20 homeliness of manner, and a plain moral speaking. He seems 
to have passed his life in one continued act of an innocent 
self-pleasing. That which he calls his Motto is a continued 
self-eulogy of two thousand lines, yet we read it to the end 
without any feeling of distaste, almost without a consciousness 
25 that we have been listening all the while to a man praising 
himself. There are none of the cold particles in it, the hard- 
ness and self-ends which render vanity and egotism hateful. 
He seems to be praising another person, under the mask of 



POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE WITHER 313 

self; or rather we feel that it was indifferent to him where 
he found the virtue which he celebrates ; whether another's 
bosom, or his own, were its chosen receptacle. His poems 
are full, and this in particular is one downright confession, 
of a generous self-seeking. But by self he sometimes means 5 
a great deal, — his friends, his principles, his country, the 
human race. 

Whoever expects to find in the satirical pieces of this writer 
any of those peculiarities which pleased him in the satires of 
Dryden or Pope, will be grievously disappointed. Here are 10 
no high-finished characters, no nice traits of individual nature, 
few or no personalities. The game run down is coarse gen- 
eral vice, or folly as it appears in classes. A liar, a drunkard, 
a coxcomb, is stript and whipt ; no Shaftesbury, no Villiers, 
or Wharton, is curiously anatomized, and read upon. But to 15 
a well-natured mind there is a charm of moral sensibility run- 
ning through them which amply compensates the want of 
those luxuries. Wither seems everywhere bursting with a 
love of goodness, and a hatred of all low and base actions. — 
At this day it is hard to discover what parts in the poem here 20 
particularly alluded to, Abuses Stript and Whipt, could have 
occasioned the imprisonment of the author. Was Vice in 
High Places more suspicious than now? had she more power; 
or more leisure to listen after ill reports? That a man should 
be convicted of a libel when he named no names but Hate, 25 
and Envy, and Lust, and Avarice, is like one of the indict- 
ments in the Pilgrim's Progress, where Faithful is arraigned 
for having " railed on our noble Prince Beelzebub, and spoken 
contemptibly of his honourable friends, the Lord Old Man, 
the Lord Carnal Delight, and the Lord Luxurious." What 30 
unlucky jealousy could have tempted the great men of those 
days to appropriate such innocent abstractions to themselves ! 

Wither seems to have contemplated to a degree of idolatry 
his own possible virtue. He ig foreyer anticipating persecution 



314 POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE WITHER 

and martyrdom ; fingering, as it were, the flames, to try how 
he can bear them. Perhaps his premature defiance some- 
times made him obnoxious to censures, which he would 
otherwise have shpped by. 
5 The homely versification of these Satires is not likely to 
attract in the present day. It is certainly not such as we 
should expect from a poet " soaring in the high region of his 
fancies with his garland and his singing robes about him ; " ^ 
nor is it such as he has shown in his Philarete, and in some 

10 parts of his Shepherds Hunting. He seems to have adopted 
this dress with voluntary humility, as fittest for a moral teacher, 
as our divines choose sober gray or black ; but in their humility 
consists their sweetness. The deepest tone of moral feeling in 
them, (though all throughout is weighty, earnest, and passion- 

15 ate) is in those pathetic injunctions against shedding of blood in 
quarrels, in the chapter entitled Reve?ige. The story of his own 
forbearance, which follows, is highly interesting. While the 
Christian sings his own victory over Anger, the Man of Courage 
cannot help peeping out to let you know that it was some higher 

20 principle \}i\2Si.fear which counselled his forbearance. 

Whether encaged, or roaming at liberty. Wither never seems 
to have abated a jot of that free spirit, which sets its mark 
upon his writings, as much as a predominant feature of inde- 
pendence impresses every page of our late glorious Burns ; but 

25 the elder poet wraps his proof-armour closer about him, the 
other wears his too much outwards ; he is thinking too much 
of annoying the foe, to be quite easy within; the spiritual 
defences of Wither are a perpetual source of inward sunshine ; 
the magnanimity of the modern is not without its alloy of 

30 soreness, and a sense of injustice which seems perpetually to 
gall and irritate. Wither was better skilled in the " sweet uses 
of adversity," he knew how to extract the "precious jewel" 
from the head of the " toad," without drawing any of the 

1 Milton. 



POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE WITHER 315 

" ugly venom " along with it. The prison notes of Wither 

are finer than the wood notes of most of his poetical brethren. 
The description in the Fourth Eclogue of his Shepherds Hunt- 
ing (which was composed during his imprisonment in the 
Marshalsea) of the power of the Muse to extract pleasure from 5 
common objects, has been oftener quoted, and is more known, 
than any part of his writings. Indeed the whole Eclogue is 
in a strain so much above, not only what himself, but almost 
what any other poet has written, that he himself could not 
help noticing it ; he remarks, that his spirits had been raised 10 
higher than they were wont " through the love of poesy." — 
The praises of Poetry have been often sung in ancient and in 
modern times ; strange powers have been ascribed to it of 
influence over animate and inanimate auditors ; its force over 
fascinated crowds has been acknowledged ; but, before Wither, 1 5 
no one ever celebrated its power at home, the wealth and the 
strength which this divine gift confers upon its possessor. 
Fame, and that too after death, was all which hitherto the 
poets had promised themselves from their art. It seems to 
have been left to Wither to discover, that poetry was a present 20 
possession, as well as a rich reversion ; and that the Muse had 
promise of both lives, of this, and of that which was to come. 

The Mistress of Philarete is in substance a panegyric pro- 
tracted through several thousand lines in the mouth of a 
single speaker, but diversified, so as to produce an almost 25 
dramatic effect, by the artful introduction of some ladies, 
who are rather auditors than interlocutors in the scene ; and 
of a boy, whose singing furnishes pretence for an occasional 
change of metre : though the seven-syllable line, in which the 
main part of it is written, is that in which Wither has shown 30 
himself so great a master, that I do not know that I am always 
thankful to him for the exchange. 

Wither has chosen to bestow upon the lady whom he com- 
mends, the nanie of Arete, or Virtue ; and assuming to himself 



3l6 POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE WITHER 

the character of Philarete, or Lover of Virtue, there is a sort 
of propriety in that heaped measure of perfections, which he 
attributes to this partly real, partly allegorical, personage. 
Drayton before him had shadowed his mistress under the 
5 name of Idea, or Perfect Pattern, and some of the old Italian 
love-strains are couched in such religious terms as to make 
it doubtful whether it be a mistress, or Divine Grace, which 
the poet is addressing. 

In this poem (full of beauties) there are two passages of 

10 pre-eminent merit. The first is where the lover, after a flight 

of rapturous commendation, expresses his wonder why all men 

that are about his mistress, even to her very servants, do not 

view her with the same eyes that he does. 

Sometime I do admire 
15 All men burn not with desire: 

Nay, I muse her servants are not 

Pleading love ; but O ! they dare not 

And I therefore wonder, why 

They do not grow sick and die. 
20 " Sure they would do so, but that, 

By the ordinance of fate, 

There is some concealed thing, 

So each gazer limiting, 

He can see no more of merit, 
25 Than beseems his worth and spirit. 

For in her a grace there shines, 

That o'er-daring thoughts confines, 

Making worthless men despair 

To be loved of one so fair. 
30 Yea, the destinies agree, 

Some good judgi7ietits blind should be, 

And not gain the power of knowing 

Those rare beauties in her growing. 

Reason doth as much imply : 
35 For, if every judging eye, 



POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE WITHER 317 

Which beholdeth her, should there 

Find what excellencies are, 

All, o'ercome by those perfections, 

Would be captive to affections. 

So, in happiness unblest, 5 

She for lovers should not rest. 

The other is, where he has been comparing her beautie? to 
gold, and stars, and the most excellent things in nature ; and, 
fearing to be accused of hyperbole, the common charge against 
poets, vindicates himself by boldly taking upon him, that these 10 
comparisons are no hyperboles ; but that the best things in 
nature do, in a lover's eye, fall short of those excellencies 
which he adores in her. 

What pearls, what rubies can 
Seem so lovely fair to man, 15 

As her lips whom he doth love. 
When in sweet discourse they move, 
Or her lovelier teeth, the while 
She doth bless him with a smile? 
Stars indeed fair creatures be ; 20 

Yet amongst us where is he 
Joys not more the whilst he lies 
Sunning in his mistress' eyes. 
Than in all the glimmering light 
Of a starry winter's night? 25 

Note the beauty of an eye 

And if aught you praise it by 
Leave such passion in your mind. 
Let my reason's eye be blind. 

Mark if ever red or white 3° 

Anywhere gave such delight, 
As when they have taken place 
In a worthy woman's face. 

.Ma '1' *!» ^li Jt ■Jt 

y[* yf^ Tfr ^fc "Tf^ vf* 



31 8 POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE WITHER 

I must praise her as I may, 
Which I do mine own rude way, 
Sometimes setting forth her glories 
By unheard-of allegories &c. 

5 To the measure in which these lines are written, the wits of 
Queen Anne's days contemptuously gave the name of Namby 
Pamby, in ridicule of Ambrose Philips, who has used it in some 
instances, as in the lines on Cuzzoni, to my feeling, at least, 
very deliciously ; but Wither, whose darling measure it seems 

lo to have been, may show, that in skilful hands it is capable of 

expressing the subtilest movements of passion. So true it is, 

which Drayton seems to have felt, that it is the poet who 

modifies the metre, not the metre the poet ; in his own words, 

that 
15 'Tis possible to climb ; 

To kindle, or to stake ; 

Altho' in Skelton's rhyme.^ 

1 A long line is a line we are long repeating. In the Shepherds 
Hunting take the following — 

If thy verse doth bravely tower, 
As she makes wing, she gets power ; 
Yet the higher she doth soar, 
She's affronted still the more, 
Till she to the high'st hath past, 
Then she rests with fame at last. 

What longer measure can go beyond the majesty of this ? what Alex- 
andrine is half so long in pronouncing, or expresses labour slowly but 
strongly surmounting difficulty with the life with which it is done in the 
second of these lines? or what metre would go beyond these, from 

Philarete — 

Her true beauty leaves behind 

Apprehensions in my mind 

Of more sweetness, than all art 

Or inventions can impart. 

Thoughts too deep to be expressed, 

And too strong to be suppress' d. 



NOTES 



L A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA 

BY A FRIEND 

London Magazine, January, 1823 

This paper was first published by Lamb in the interval between the 
two series of Essays of Elia. He seems to have intended it partly as 
a farewell to his readers, and partly as a piece of mystification. With 
the omission of the latter part, it was reprinted by Moxon in 1833 as 
an appropriate preface to Lamb's last essays. This apologetic self- 
revelation and humorous analysis of his own character, half ironical 
though it be, shows the causes of his unpopularity and is a valuable 
commentary on his style. 

1. the late Elia. When Lamb began to write for the London Maga 
zine in August, 1820, he assumed the pen name of Elia (pronounced by 
him Ell-ia) in memory of an obscure Italian clerk of this name whom 
he had known at the South-Sea House. 

1 3-4. to see his papers collected into a volume. This volume included 
Ella's twenty-eight contributions to the London Magazine, August, 1820, 
to November, 1822, and an essay on Valentine^ s Day from the Indicator 
of February, 1821. It was issued from the press of Taylor and Hessey, 
London, 1823. "Eleven years after," says Mr. Charles Kent, "before 
the author's death, it was already out of print, a stray copy only by rare 
chance being purchasable at a book-stall." 

I4-5. the London Magazine appeared in January, 1820, as a monthly 
under the editorial direction of John Scott. Thirteen months later, 
when Scott was killed in a duel with Christie of Blackwood'' s Magazine, 
the London passed into the hands of Taylor and Hessey. In the five 
years of its existence, though not financially successful, it had many 
famous contributors, among them being Lamb, De Quincey, Hazlitt, 
Procter, Hood, Cary, Cunningham, Montgomery, Keats, Mitford, 
Reynolds, and Carlyle. 

319 



320 NOTES 

1 7. Saint Bride's: a church just off Fleet Street, Loridon. It is 
the burial place of Richardson, and is closely associated with Milton, 
Lovelace, and Dr. Johnson. 

1 9. his friends T. and H. : Taylor and Hessey, the publishers of the 
Lo7tdon. 

1 11. Janus wept: a play on the name of the Roman god and the 
pen name of Wainwright, " Janus Weathercock," a contributor to the 
London of " articles of flashy assumption." This clever, heartless, 
voluptuous coxcomb subsequently committed murder. 

1 11-12. The gentle P r : Bryan Weller Procter, better known 

as " Barry Cornwall" (i 790-1874), a poet of the Cockney school, who 
made considerable reputation as a writer of sea songs. He was much 
liked by Lamb and wrote a memoir of him. 

113. Allan C. : Cunningham (1784-1842), a Scotch poet and man 
of letters, who was at this time (1823) secretary to Chantrey, a London 
sculptor. He was the author of popular songs, stories, and biographies 
of eminent British painters, sculptors, and architects. 

1 13. nobly forgetful : a reference to some unappreciative remarks 
about the Scotch in Lamb's essay on Imperfect Sympathies. 

1 14-15. a " Tale of Lyddalcross " : one of Cunningham'' s Traditional 
Tales of the Peasantry. 

2 8. a country-boy : Coleridge. '&&& note io Christ^ s Hospital. 

3 24. intimados : intimate friends. 

4 4. Marry: an old English interjection or expletive, derived from 
Mary, 

4 6-7. proceeded a statist : i.e. discoursed as eloquently as a statesman, 

4 16. Shacklewell. See note to the South-Sea House. 

4 28-29. toga virilis : the garment assumed by a young Roman on 
reaching manhood. 

4 33. This passage, inclosed in brackets, appeared in the London, 
but was suppressed in the volume of the Last Essays of Elia (1833)^. 

4 34. his cousin Bridget : the author's sister Mary. 

5 7. the East India House. The old house of the East India Com- 
pany (established in 1600) stood at the corner of Leadenhall and Lime 
Streets, London, 

5 29. facetious Bishop Corbet: Richard Corbet (1582-1635), bishop 
of Oxford and Norwich. He was the author of Farewell to the Fairies, 
and other light verse. 

5 29. Hoole, John (i 727-1803) : an English poet who translated Tasso's 
Jerusalem Delivered, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, and other Italian poems. 

5 30-31. God assoil him therefor : i.e. May God forgive him for it 



NOTES ' 321 

5 31. Walton, Izaak (1593-1683): a noted author who was a shop- 
keeper in London until the civil war. Lamb wrote of him to Words- 
worth as hallowing "any page in which his revered name appears." 
His most famous book is the Complete Angler (1653), v/hich Lamb 
"always loved as it were a living friend." 

61. bon-vivant: jolly companion. 

6 14, ** weaved-up follies " : a phrase from Shakespeare's ^zV/^araT //, 
IV, i, 228. 

IL THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 

London Magazine, August, 1820 

This essay was first printed under the title of Recollections of the 
South-Sea House. Lamb held a subordinate clerkship in this house 
for an unknown period between 1789 and 1792. It appears from the 
official records of the company for the latter year that his brother 
John was then holding the position of deputy accountant. 

6 15. the Bank : the Bank of England. 

6 17. the Flower Pot : a London inn from which the coach for the 
north started. 

6 18. Dalston or Shacklewell: northern suburbs of London where 
rents were low, and where consequently many " lean annuitants," per- 
sons of small yearly income, resided. 

7 12-13. the two first monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty : George I 
(1714-1727) and George II (1727-1760). 

7 18. pieces of eight : a name given by the buccaneers to the Span- 
ish piaster, which was divided into eight silver reals. It was first 
coined in 1479, ^"'^ was about equal in value to our dollar. 

7 19. " unsunned heap " : a phrase from Milton's Comus, 1. 398. 

7 19. Mammon : a Syriac word meaning riches ; personified as the 
god of riches by Spenser, Faerie Queene, II, 7, and Milton, Paradise 
Lost, I, 678. 

7 91. that famous Bubble: the South-Sea Bubble, a colossal finan- 
cial scheme which originated about 171 1 and collapsed in 1720. It 
was one of the principal events of George I's reign. For a detailed 
account of the series of ruinous speculations connected with this and 
other bubble companies, see Montgomery's English History, p. 311, or 
Green's Short History of the English People, p. 698. 

7 32. a superfoetation of dirt : a secondary engendering, i.e. a double 
layer, of dirt. 



322 NOTES 

8 6. Titan. The Titans were a race of giants, children of Uranus 
(heaven) and Gaea (earth), who made war against the Olympian deities. 

8 6-7. Vaux's superhuman plot : the plot of Guido Vaux, or Guy 
Fawkes, and other conspirators to blow up the Houses of Parliament 
in 1605. 

9 1. Herculaneum : one of the cities buried by the eruption of 
Vesuvius in a.d. 79. The first systematic excavations were made 
under French rule between 1806 and 181 5. 

9 1. pounce-boxes : boxes with perforated lids for sprinkling a fine 
powder on manuscript to prevent the ink from spreading. 

9 22. Cambro-Briton : a Welshman. Cambria was the legendary and 
ancient Latin name of Wales. 

9 27. Maccaronies (properly spelled Macaronies) : the name usually 
applied to English fops during the later part of the eighteenth century. 

10 1. Anderton's : a coffeehouse on Fleet Street. 

10 14. Rosamond's Pond : a sheet of water in St. James Park, which 
was filled up in 1770. It w^as " long consecrated to disastrous love and 
elegiac poetry." " Fair Rosamond " was Jane Clifford, the mistress of 
Henry II, who, according to tradition, was compelled by the jealous 
Queen Eleanor to poison herself (1176). 

10 14-15. Mulberry Gardens : public gardens (now in the grounds of 
Buckingham Palace), so called from the mulberry trees planted by 
James I. 

10 15. Cheap, the old name of Cheapside, a street rich in historical 
associations. 

10 17. Hogarth. See note on the essay On the Genius and Character 
of Hogarth. 

10 18. Noon. The scene of " Noon " is a French Huguenot chapel 
in Hog Lane. 

10 19-20. Louis the Fourteenth; King of France, 1643-17 15. By his 
revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which had since 1598 granted 
to the Huguenots political equality and rights with the Catholics, he 
drove about fifty thousand industrious Protestant families from France, 
prostrated the country, and paved the way for the Revolution. 

10 22. the Seven Dials : a locality about midway between the Brit- 
ish Museum and Trafalgar Square, and once notorious as a center of 
poverty. It took its name from a column with seven sundials which 
marked the meeting of seven streets. 

10 23. Thomas Tame: he succeeded Evans as deputy cashier in 1793. 

10 2.5-26. Westminster Hall : built by William 11. It is now used as 
an entrance to the Houses of Parliament. 



NOTES 323 

10 34. its original state of white paper : a figure used by John Locke, 
who denied the existence of innate ideas, to illustrate the condition of 
the child's mind before the use of the senses. 

111. posed: puzzled him by putting a question. 

11 9-10. unfortunate house of Derwentwater. James Radcliffe (1689- 
17 16), Earl of Derwentwater, was an English Catholic nobleman who 
supported the Pretender in the rebellion of 171 5, and was beheaded in 
London in the following year. 

11 19. John Tipp : he was succeeded in the office of deputy account- 
ant by John Lamb, and became accountant in 1792. 

11 24-25. with other notes than to the Orphean Ijrre : a quotation from 
Paradise Lost., Ill, 17. 

12 5. He sate like Lord Midas: i.e. without any skill in judging of 
music. Justice Midas is a character in a play by Kane O'Hara (1764). 
When, in a singing contest, he awards the prize to Pan, it turns out 
that Apollo was one of the competitors. The classical King Midas 
was punished with asses' ears for a similar offense. 

13 12. ** greatly find quarrel in a straw " : a quotation from Hamlet^ 
IV, iv, 53-56. 

13 20. the dusty dead : a phrase from Macbeth^ V, v, 22. 

13 26-27. in two forgotten volumes. Miscellatteous Works in Verse and 
Prose of the late Henry Man is a collection of light and amusing papers 
on a variety of subjects. Man became deputy secretary in 1793. 

13 28. Barbican: a street in London where Milton lived in 1645. 
Leigh Hunt's pig in his essay On the Graces and Anxieties of Pig- 
Driving "was not to be comforted in Barbican." 

13 31. " new-born gauds " : a phrase from Troihis atid Cressida, III, 
iii, 175. 

13 32. Public Ledgers . . . Chronicles. Two prominent London news- 
papers of the eighteenth century. 

13 32-34. Chatham, Earl of (1708-1778), William Pitt; Shelburne, 
Earl of (i 737-1805), William Petty, as prime minister recognized 
American independence; Rockingham, Marquis of (i 730-1 782), Charles 
Wentworth, preceded Shelbume as prime minister ; Howe, Sir William 
(d. 1814), a British general in the American war; Burgoyne, John, a 
British general who surrendered to the Americans at Saratoga in 1777; 
Clinton, Sir Henry, a British general in the same war. 

14 1-2. Keppel: an English admiral; Wilkes, John (1727-1797), 
editor of the North Britain, was arrested on the charge of accusing 
the king of falsehood, but liberated under the order of Chief Justice 
Pratt (Charles; 1713-1794), afterwards Lord Chancellor and Earl of 



324 NOTES 

Camden ; Sawbridge and Bull, Lord Mayors of London in latter part of 
the eighteenth century; Dunning, John (1731-1783), Lord Ashburton, 
author of a bill in the House of Commons to diminish the influence 
of the Crown; Richmond, probably a member of the Rockingham 
ministry. 

14 5. Plumer, Richard : master of the Hertfordshire mansion in 
which Lamb's grandmother, Mary Field, was housekeeper for fifty 
years ; hence his interest in the family. Plumer was deputy secretary 
in 1800. 

14 7. the sinister bend: also called "the bastard bar," a term in 
heraldry indicating illegitimacy. 

14 12. bachelor-uncle. According to the family pedigree found in 
Cussans' Hertfordshire, Walter Plumer, the uncle of William Plumer, 
was not a bachelor. 

14 18. Cave came off cleverly : an inaccuracy of Lamb's. Cave, not 
Plumer, was cited before the House of Commons on a breach of 
privilege for having challenged a frank given to the Duchess of Marl- 
borough by Walter Plumer, M.P. See Johnson's Life of Cave. 

14 24. pastoral M : T. Maynard, who was chief clerk of the old 

annuities and three-per-cents from 1788 to 1793, and who, according 
to Lamb's Key, hanged himself. 

14 26. that song sung by Amiens : As You Like Lt, II, vii. 

15 10-11. perad venture the very names . . . are fantastic : an example 
of Lamb's fondness for mystification. The names in this essay are not 
fictitious but are found in the Royal Calendar and other records. 

15 11-12. like Henry Pimpernel, and old John Naps of Greece. These 
names are mentioned in the Induction to the Taming of the Shrew as 
never having existed. 

Review Questions. 1. What is Lamb's attitude to his reader? 2. 
Where does he show a fondness for the past ? 3. Find indications of 
his business training. 4. What impression do you get of his scholar- 
ship and range of reading ? 5. Analyze the humor in his characteriza- 
tion of Evans, Tame, Tipp, and Plumer. 6. Find examples of Lamb's 
use of the pun. 7. Explain the following phrases : " his mind was in 
its original state of white paper," decus et solamen, " Orphean lyre," 
" like Lord Midas," " nib a pen," " wet a wafer," " triple calumniations 
{£. s. d.)," "superfluity of ciphers," "Conduit in Cheap," and "night's 
wheels." 8. Note use of the following words : Titan, Herculaneum, 
Cambro-Briton, Maccaronies, Whig, gibcat, hypochondry, pounce-boxes, 
battening, manes, tomes, rubric, quirk, and gibes. 



NOTES 325 



III. OXFORD IN THE VACATION 

London Magazine, October, 1820 

This second contribution from Elia was given the place of honor in 
the London. At the close was the date of its composition, " August 5th, 
1820," and the words "From my rooms facing the Bodleian." On 
leaving Christ's Hospital, Lamb was prevented by poverty and physical 
infirmity from entering Oxford or Cambridge with his more fortunate 
schoolmates Coleridge, Hunt, Dyer, Field, and Barnes. He loved, 
however, to spend his annual holidays amid the associations of those 
great universities. The charm which these visits had for him is touch- 
ingly recorded in his Cambridge sonnet, 

" I was not trained in Academic bowers." 

15 19. Vivares, Fran9ois (1709-1780): a French landscape painter 
who went to London, at the age of eighteen and became one of the 
founders of landscape engraving in England. 

15 19. Woollett, William (i 735-1 785) : the most distinguished of the 
English landscape engravers. 

15 25. notched and crept scrivener : an attorney or money lender with 
close-cut hair. " Notched " may refer to his desk or his quill or the 
tallies by which he kept his accounts. 

15 28. agnize : acknowledge. Cf. Othello, I, iii, 232. 

16 25, " Andrew and John, men famous in old times " : probably para- 
phrased from Milton, Paradise Regained, II, 7. Lamb refers to those 
days of the calendar which were once observed as religious holidays in 
honor of certain saints. 

16 28. the old Basket Prayer-book: a little duodecimo prayer-book 
(1749), so named from the publisher T. Baskett (misspelled by Lamb). 

16 28-29. Peter in his uneasy posture : according to tradition this 
apostle was crucified head downward. The day sacred to him in the 
calendar is June 29. 

16 29. holy Bartlemy : Saint Bartholomew, one of the twelve apostles, 
commonly called Nathanael. Tradition says that he was flayed alive. 
The day sacred to him is August 24. 

16 30. the famous Marsyas by Spagnoletti (Lamb's spelling) : a paint- 
ing of Apollo flaying the satyr, by the Spanish-Neapolitan artist, Jusepe 
Ribera Spagnoletto (i 588-1656). 

17 5. ** far off their coming shone " : 9, paraphrase from Paradise I^ost^ 
VI, 768. 



326 ^ NOTES 

17 17. Selden, John (i 584-1654) : a jurist, antiquarian, orientalist, 
and author of legal and theological works. He represented Oxford in 
Parliament, and was afterwards Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. 
He was one of the most learned men of the century. 

17 17. Archbishop Usher, James (i 580-1 656) : an Irish theologian and 
scholar who wrote a notable work on biblical chronology. He became 
primate of Ireland and took sides with Charles I. 

17 19. the mighty Bodley : the Bodleian Library of Oxford Univer- 
sity, which contains about four hundred and sixty thousand books, 
twenty-seven thousand manuscripts, and fifty thousand coins. It was 
first opened in 1488, but was refounded by Sir Thomas Bodley (1545- 
1613), an English scholar and diplomat. 

17 27. I seem admitted ad eundem : admitted without loss of class 
standing in going from one university to another. 

17 29. a Sizar at Cambridge and a Servitor at Oxford were origi- 
nally paid students who were exempt from paying the ordinary fees, but 
waited on the tables at the mess or performed other menial duties. 

17 30. a Gentleman Commoner : a student who paid full fees and 
enjoyed special privileges. 

18 5. Christ's : Christ Church, one of the largest and most fashion- 
able colleges of Oxford, founded by Cardinal Wolsey in 1525. 

18 5. Magdalen : St. Maiy Magdalen College of Oxford, founded by 
Bishop Waynflete in 1457. 

18 13-14. spits which have cooked for Chaucer. There is no evidence 
that Chaucer (1340.?-! 400) was ever a student at either Oxford or 
Cambridge. 

18 16. a Manciple : the ofiicer who had the care of purchasing food 
for the college. Cf. Chaucer's Prologue, 567. 

18 22. what half Januses are we: Janus was the god of the rising 
and setting sun, and was represented with two faces. 

19 12-13. Herculanean raker. Some charred papyrus rolls were found 
in a buried library at Herculaneum. 

19 13. the three witnesses : a reference to the disputed passage in 
I John V. 7. 

19 14. Porson, Richard (i 759-1808) : a professor at Cambridge, who 
was a noted Greek scholar and editor of the classics. 

19 15. G. D. : George Dyer (i 755-1841), one of Lamb's schoolmates 
at Christ's Hospital, and afterwards a student at Cambridge. Later he 
became a booksellers' drudge, compiling indexes and editing the Valpy 
edition of the classics. His best known works are his History of the 
University and Colleges of Cambridge and a Life of Robert Robijison. 



NOTES 327 

His awkwardness, absent-mindedness, bland credulity, and pedantry- 
made him the butt of Lamb's affectionate banter and practical jokes. 
He is the hero of Elia's essay Amicus Redivivus. 

19 17. Oriel : a college of Oxford, founded by Adam de Brome and 
Edv/ard II in 1326. 

19 20. a tall Scapula. Scapula pirated Stephen's Thesaurus Linguae 
Graecae in 1 530. A tall book is one whose leaves are not cut down in 
binding. 

20 3. Clifford's Inn: one of the inns of chancery in London, origi- 
nally a law school dating from the reign of Edward III. 

20 7. " in calm and sinless peace " : a reminiscence of Wordsworth's 
White Doe of Ry I stone, 1. 48. 

21 9. the Temple. See note on The Old Benchers of the Imier 
Temple. - 

21 12. our friend M.'s : Basil Montagu, Q. C, editor of Bacon. 

21 20. Mrs. M. : Mrs. Montagu, mentioned in Carlyle's Reminiscences^ 
and called by Irving " a noble lady." 

21 21. Queen Lar : the chief of the domestic divinities of the Roman 
household. 

21 21. pretty A. S. : Mrs. Montagu's daughter, Anne Skepper. She 
afterwards married Procter, who vouches for the truth of the incident. 

2128. like another Sosia: a slave in Plautus' play Amphitryon. Mer- 
cury is disguised as the double of Sosia, who is thus led to doubt his 
own identity. 

22 2. Mount Tabor : according to tradition the scene of the Trans- 
figuration. 

22 3. Parnassus : the resort of the Muses. 

22 3. co-sphered with Plato : i.e. absorbed in philosophic reflections. 
The ancients believed that the souls of the great dead were stationed 
in spheres or orbits. Cf. Milton, // Penseroso, 88-92. 

22 3. Harrington, James (1611-1677): author of the Commonwealth 
of Oceana, a treatise on civil government, modeled on More's Utopia. 

22 9. This passage in brackets appeared in the original London 
article but was suppressed by Lamb in the volume of 1823. 

22 10. in the house of " pure Emanuel " : Emanuel College, Cambridge, 

22 23. Give me Agur's wish. See Proverbs xxx. 8, 9. 

23 14-15. Bath, Buxton, Scarborough, Harrogate. These popular Eng- 
lish watering places may be located on the map. 

23 ]5-l6. The Cam and the Isis : the two rivers on which Cambridge 
and Oxford universities respectively are situated. 

23 16-17. ** better than all the waters of Damascus." See 2 Kings v. 12. 



328 NOTES 

23 18. Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains : the mountains from 
which the pilgrims in Bunyan's Pilgrim'' s Progress, Part I, had a view 
of the Celestial City. 

23 20-21. the Interpreter of the House Beautiful: a character in Pil- 
grim'' s Progress, Part I, lord of a house a little beyond the Wicket Gate. 
He symbolizes the Holy Ghost. 

Review Questions. 1. Explain the figure at the close of the third 
paragraph. 2. Has this essay the true flavor of university life and 
scholarship .-' 3. Explain the literary allusions in the last paragraph. 
4. Analyze the characterization of Dyer. 5. Find an apostrophe and 
compare with similar passages in Raleigh, Byron, and De Quincey. 
6. Note the rambling construction of the essay. 7. Note the phrase 
" the better JudeT Who were the two Judes ? 8. Explain the follow- 
ing: agnize, arride, headsman, Joseph's vest, varies lectiones, "those 
sciential apples," Mount Tabor, Parnassus. 



IV. CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS 

AGO 

London Magazine, November, 1820 

The Gentleman's Magazine for June, 181 3, contained an article by 
Lamb entitled Recollections of Chrisfs Hospital. This essay was 
reprinted in Ollier's edition in 1818, and is referred to in the opening 
sentences of the present paper. Under the mask of Elia, Lamb here 
writes in the character of his old schoolmate Coleridge. The earlier 
essay was a serious and enthusiastic appreciation of the dignity and 
value of the famous Blue-Coat School ; the latter was a supplementary 
chapter on the humors and hardships of the boys due to the peculiar 
traditions and discipline of the school. On the same subject Coleridge 
has written in his Biographia Literaria, Chap. I, and Leigh Hunt in 
his Autobiography, Chaps. Ill and IV. 

24 18. banyan . . . days : the days on which sailors have no allow- 
ance of meat. The name is taken from the Hindoo devotees who 
abstain from flesh. 

24 22. caro equina : horseflesh. 

25 1. the Tishbite: the prophet Elijah. 

26 15-16. the Lions in the Tower. The royal menagerie formerly kept 
in this the most ancient fortress and state prison of London was removed 
to the Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park in 1834. 



NOTES 329 

26 18. L.'s governor: Samuel Salt, the old Bencher of the Inner 
Temple. He was called to the bench in 1782 and died in 1792. He 
occupied two sets of chambers in Crown-office Row, kept a carriage, 
and had two indoor servants besides the Lambs. Lamb's father, John, 
was in his service for forty-five years as clerk and factotum, his mother 
as housekeeper. Salt provided for them generously by various bequests 
at his death. Charles owed his admission to Christ's Hospital to a 
friend of Salt's. 

27 4. There was one H : Hodges, according to Lamb's Key. 

27 8. My friend Tobin. Little more than his name is known. In a 
letter to Wordsworth in 1806 Lamb speaks of a visit from Tobin, and 
records his death in a letter to Southey in 181 5. Tobin was Godwin's 
pen name in his tragedy Antonio. 

27 18. Caligula's minion. The emperor's favorite horse, Incitatus, was 
fed at a marble manger with gilded oats. He was made a consul and 
a priest. 

28 2. paintings by Verrio. In Newgate Street is seen the hall, or 
eating room, one of the noblest in England, adorned with enormously 
long paintings by Verrio and others, and with an organ. See Leigh 
Hunt's Autobiography, Chap. Ill, p. 57. . 

28 3. blue-coat boys. Christ's Hospital was popularly called the Blue- 
Coat School from the dress of the pupils, which was the ordinary costume 
of boys in humble station during the time of the Tudors. It consisted 
of a blue drugget gown with ample skirts, a yellow vest, knee breeches of 
Russian duck, yellow worsted stockings, a leathern girdle, and a little 
black worsted cap usually carried in the hand. This costume is still 
retained. Christ's was founded as a charity school by King Edward VI 
on the site of the monastery of the Gray Friars in Newgate Street. 

28 8. " To feed our mind with idle portraiture " : a translation from 
memory of Virgil's line, animutn pictura pascit inani {/Eneid, I, 464). 

2816-17. "'Twas said, He ate strange flesh": quoted at random 
from Antony and Cleopatra, I, iv. 

29 14. Mr. Hathaway. We of the grammar school used to call him 
" the yeoman " on account of Shakespeare having married the daughter 
of a man of that name, designated as " a substantial yeoman " (Leigh 
Hunt, Autobiography, Chap. Ill, p. 59). 

30 8. Bedlam : the hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem in London, 
originally a priory dating from about 1247, but now used as an asylum 
for the insane. 

30 33. Holy Paul : St. Paul's Cathedral, in which stands the statue of 
John Howard. 



330 NOTES 

30 25. auto da f6 (Portuguese) : act of faith. The ceremony used 
in Spain and Portugal in executing the judgment of the tribunal of the 
Inquisition. There was a procession of monks, penitents, and heretics 
through the streets to the church, where, after a sermon, the condemned 
were handed over to the civil authorities to be strangled or burned. 

30 26-27. " watchet weeds " : blue clothes. 

31 24. San Benito : the short linen dress, on which demons were 
painted, worn by the heretics condemned by the Inquisition. 

32 2. Rev. James Boyer. According to Lamb, Coleridge, and Leigh 
Hunt he was an excellent teacher and a man of wide learning and 
common sense, but much feared on account of his violent temper and 
severe discipline. See Coleridge's Biog^-aphia Literaria, Vol. I, 145, 
Table Talk, p. 85, and Hunt's Autobiography, Chap. Ill, 66. 

32 3. Rev, Matthew Field. Hunt gives a delightfully humorous sketch 
of him in his Autobiography, III, 65, corroborative of Lamb's opinion. 

32 24. " insolent Greece or haughty Rome " : from Ben Jonson's Li7ies 
on Shakespeare. 

32 25. Peter Wilkins, The Life and Adventures 0/ (ly^i) : a grotesque 
romance by Robert Paltock of the imaginary island of Graundevolet, 
inhabited by a race of winged people. 

32 34. Rousseau and John Locke. Lamb refers to their pedagogical 
theories. They helped to found the modern methods of training 
children on the principle of following their natural dispositions. 

33 10. Phaedrus : a Roman writer, originally a Macedonian slave, 
who lived in the first half of the first century a. d. 

33 16. a sort of Helots : a class of serfs among the ancient Spartans. 
They did not receive as severe training as their masters, and served 
only as light-armed troops in time of war. 

33 21. with a silence as deep, etc. : Pythagoras, the Samite, founder of 
a famous mathematical and philosophical school at Crotona in southern 
Italy in the sixth century B.C. The pupils were banded in a religious frater- 
nity where everything was kept a profound secret from the outer world. 

34 3-4. Ululantes . . . Tartarus : probably an allusion to Virgil's 
y^neid, VI, 548 seq. 

34 8. Flaccus's quibble about Rex. See Horace, Satires, I, 7, 35. 

34 9. tristis severitas in vultu. See Terence, Andrea, V, ii, 16. 

34 9. inspicere in patinas. See Terence, Adelphi, III, iii, 74. 

35 5. the Debates : in Parliament. 

35 22-23. The author of the Country Spectator. Ainger refers to an 
amusing account of the origin of this periodical, founded by Bishop Mid- 
dleton, in Mozley's Reminiscences of Oriel College, Vol. Ill, Addenda. 



NOTES 331 

35 30-3] . First Grecian : the highest class, composed of picked boys 
who were preparing to enter one of the universities. 

35 33. Dr. T e: the Rev. Arthur William Trollope, the succes- 
sor of Boyle as head master. He retired from the school in 1827 and 
died soon afterwards. 

36 12. Th : the Right Hon. Sir Edward Thornton, minister to 

Portugal and to Brazil under Pitt. He was third wrangler at Cambridge 
in 1789. 

36 90. regni novitas : See Virgil's ^neid, I, 563. 

36 29. poor S : Scott, died in Bedlam (Lamb's Key). 

36 29. ill-fated M : Maunde, dismissed school (Lamb's Key). 

36 30. " Finding some of Edward's race," etc. : quoted incorrectly from 
Matthew Prior's Carmen Sceculare for 1700, st. viii, Edward being sub- 
stituted for Stuart. 

37 5. Mirandula : Coleridge. Mirandula is a variation of the name 
of Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), an Italian poet and student of 
Plato. 

37 7. Jamblichus : an Alexandrian philosopher of the third century, 
the founder of the Syrian school of Neo-Platonism. 

37 7. Plotinus (204-270 a.d.) : a Neo-Platonic philosopher of Egypt, 
who taught in Rome. 

37 11. *' wit-combats." The quotation which follows is a close para- 
phrase of Fuller's account in the English Worthies of the wit-com.bats 
between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. 

37 12. C. V. Le G : Charles Valentine Le Grice, one of the 

Grecians at Christ's Hospital, afterwards a clergyman in his native 
county of Cornwall. He wrote a translation of Longus's pastoral 
romance Daphnis and Chloe. His brother Samuel was one of Lamb's 
stanchest friends. 

37 25. Nireus formosus : the son of Chiropus and Aglaia, and the 
handsomest Greek at the siege of Troy. 

37 32. the junior Le G : Samuel Le Grice, who went into the 

army and died in the West Indies. He is mentioned in Lamb's letter 
to Coleridge just after the death of his mother. 

37 32. F : Favell, a Grecian in the school, who was given a 

commission in the army and was killed in the Peninsula. Lamb wrote 
opposite the initial in his Key, " Favell left Cambridge because he was 
ashamed of his father, who was a house-painter there." He is the 
"poor W " of the Poor Relations. 

38 7. Fr : Frederick William Franklin. 

38 8. Marmaduke T : Marmaduke Thompson. 



332 NOTES 

Review Questions. 1. Find instances of Lamb's use of the sense of 
taste. 2. What is Lamb's method of making his style specific? 3. 
Point out differences in tone and local color between this essay and 
the preceding. 4. What were the relations of Lamb and Coleridge at 
school and afterwards ? 5. Where does the author show a fondness 
for mystification ? 6. Explain the allusion to Rousseau's and Locke's 
pedagogical theories. 7. Look up the biblical allusions in the essay. 
8. Examine Lamb's use of the parenthesis. 9. Explain the following : 
ultima supplicia, ululantes, Tartarus, and the Debates. 10. Who were 
Dante, Pindar, Homer, Terence, Cicero, Plato, and Xenophon ? 



V. THE TWO RACES OF MEN 

London Magazine, December, 1820 

38 16. "Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites." See Acts of the 
Apostles ,ii. 9. 

38 26. Alcibiades (450-404 B.C.) : a great Athenian statesman and 
general. See Plutarch's Lives. 

38 26. Falstaff : a character in Shakespeare's King Henry LV and 
Merry Wives of Windsor. He borrows from Mistress Quickly, Pistol, 
and others. For borrowing scenes, see i King Henry IV, III, ii ; and 
2 King Henry IV, I, ii ; II, i ; and V, iv. 

38 26. Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729). For exaggerated stories of 
how Steele borrowed from Addison, see Macaulay's Essay on Addison. 

38 26-27. our late incomparable Brinsley : the brilliant wit and orator, 
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), author of The Rivals and The 
School for Scandal. Being recklessly improvident, he was frequently 
in debt, and many stories are told of his boldness and cleverness in 
borrowing. See his Life by Thomas Moore, and Hazlitt's Lectures on 
the Comic Writers. 

39 3. Tooke, Home: the assumed name of John Home (1736-1812), 
an English politician and philologist, author of The Pantheon, etc. 
He was tried several times for libel and treason, and was at one time a 
member of Parliament. 

39 17. Candlemas : February 2, the day of the feast of the purifica- 
tion of the Virgin Mary. In Scotland it is one of the " term days " 
appointed for payments of money, interest, taxes, etc., and for entry to 
premises. See Brand's Popular Antiquities, Bohn ed. 

39 17. Feast of Holy Michael : September 29, one of the quarterly 
terms in England for paying rents, etc. See Chambers's Book of Days, 



NOTES 333 

39 18- lene tormentum : the mildest torture inflicted by the Inquisition. 
39 21. the true Propontic : the ancient name of the Sea of Marmora. 
Locate on the map and explain the comparison. 

39 33. Ralph Bigod, Esq. : John Fenwick, editor of the Albion. 
Talfourd says that "he edited several ill-fated newspapers in succes- 
sion, and was author of many libels, which did his employers no good 
and his Majesty's government no harm"; also that he was one of 
Lamb's associates who sometimes " left poor Lamb with an aching 
head and a purse exhausted by the claims of their necessities upon it " 
{Letters of Charles Lamb, Chap. VII). 

40 13. " To slacken virtue, etc." : in Jesus' reply to Satan, Paradise 
Regained, II, 455. 

4029-30. with Comus, seemed pleased, etc. See Comtis, 11. 152-155. 

42 4. Comberbatch, more properly Silas Tomkyn Comberback : the 
assumed name under which Coleridge enlisted in the King's Light 
Dragoons in 1793. For the incident see Campbell's Life of Coleridge, 
p. 28. Lamb, who was a frequenter of bookshops, accumulated a large 
library containing many valuable works. Coleridge frequently borrowed 
from him, and sometimes forgot to return. See " Letter to Coleridge " 
of June 7, 1809, Talfourd ed., Vol. II, pp. 217-218. 

42 9. like the Guildhall giants. In the Guildhall, the ancient council 
hall of London (erected 1411-1431), stand two colossal and fanciful 
wooden figures called Gog and Magog. They were carved by Saunders 
in 1708. There is an old prophecy that when they fall, then only shall 
London fall. 

42 11. Opera Bonaventurae : Saint Giovanni di Fidenza Bonaven- 
tura (1221-1274), an Italian philosopher and theological writer, sur- 
named Doctor Seraphicus. He was professor in Paris, general of the 
Franciscans, and a cardinal. 

42 13. Bellarmine : Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino (1542-1621), a Jesuit 
theological controversialist, professor in the Luvain and Roman colleges. 

42 13. Holy Thomas: Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225 ?-i274), sur- 
named Doctor Angelicus, an Italian theologian and scholastic philoso- 
pher of the Dominican order, who taught at Paris, Rome, and Bologna. 
See " Letter to Barton," Talfourd ed.. Vol. II, p. 297. 

42 14. Ascapart : a giant thirty feet high in the old romance Bevis of 
Hampton. 

42 24. Browne on Urn Burial : Sir Thomas Browne's Hydrotapkia, or 
Urn-Burial (1658), "a magnificent descant on the vanity of human life, 
based on the discovery of certain cinerary urns in Norfolk." See 
Saintsbury's History of Elizabethan Literature, pp. 339, 340. 



334 NOTES 

42 29. Dodsley's dramas: Robert Dodsley (1703-1764), an English 
bookseller and editor of the well-known Select Collection of Old Plays 
(12 vols., 1744), which was used by Lamb in preparing his Specimens 
of English Dramatic Poets. See " Letter to Manning," Talfourd ed., 
Vol. II, p. 230. 

42 30. Vittoria Corombona, or The White Devil: a tragedy by Web- 
ster (161 2), one of the noblest and most perfect of the period. See 
Saintsbury's Histo7y of Elizabethan Literature, p. 275. 

42 32. Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) : by Robert Burton, " Democritus 
Junior," " the fantastic great old man," whose humorous and pedantic 
vein powerfully influenced Lamb's style. 

From the olden time 
Of authorship, thy patent should be dated, 
And thou with Marvell, Browne and Burton mated. 

— Bernard Barton, Sonnet. 

See Lamb's "Letter to Manning" of March 17, 1800, in which he 
speaks of Coleridge having urged him to forge supposed manuscripts 
of Burton, Talfourd ed., Vol. I, p. 116. The Anatomy of Melancholy is 
the result of many years of study of men and books, and abounds in 
quotations from authors of all ages and countries. It is divided into 
three parts treating of the causes and symptoms of melancholy, of its 
cure, and of erotic and religious melancholy. 

42 33. the Complete Angler. See note, p. 321. See also " Letters to 
Coleridge" of October 28, 1796, and "to Miss Fryer" of February 14, 

1834. 

42 34. John Buncle : the title of a book by Thomas Amory (1691 ?- 
1788), so called from the name of the hero, who is a "prodigious hand 
at matrimony, divinity, a song and a peck." Amory was a stanch 
Unitarian, an earnest moralist, a humorist, and an eccentric, — traits 
which must have appealed strongly to Lamb. 

43 13. deodands : the term applied in old English law to personal chat- 
tels which had caused the death of a person, and which were forfeited to 
the crown to be distributed in alms. The law was abolished in 1846. 

43 16. C. : Coleridge. 

43 19. spiteful K. : " James Kenney, the dramatist, chiefly remem- 
bered now as the creator of Jeremy Diddler in the well-known farce 
of Raising the Wind'''' (Kent). He married a French woman and lived 
for several years in Versailles, where Lamb visited him in 1822. 

43 22. Margaret Newcastle: Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle (1624- 
1673), ni3'i<i of honor to Queen Henrietta Maria, and "distinguished 



NOTES 335 

for her faithful attachment to her lord in his long exile during the 
time of the Commonwealth and for her indefatigable pursuit of liter- 
ature " (Chambers). 

44 4. Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (i 554-1628): author of poems, 
tragedies, and a Life of Sidney^ all composed in a severely grave, sen- 
tentious style. He was stabbed to death by an old servant, who found 
that he was not mentioned in his master's will. 

44 7. Zimmermann on Solitude: a book published in 1755 by Johann 
Georg von Zimmermann (i 728-1 795), a Swiss physician at the court of 
Hanover, and author of several medical and philosophical works. 

44 10. S. T. C. : a third alias for Coleridge, to puzzle the reader. 

44 16. Daniel, Samuel (1562-1619) : the author of much poetry and 
prose, the principal of which are The History of the Civil Wars, the 
Delia Sonnets, and The Complaint of Rosamond. His best poem is his 
Epistle to the Countess of Cumberland, ai favorite with Wordsworth. 
His command of pure English caused him to be called the "w^ell- 
languaged Daniel." 

Review Questions. 1. Analyze the humor of Lamb's (a) classification 
of men, {b) biblical allusions, (e) puns, (d) Comberback's sophistry, 
(e) exaggerations, (_/") figures and illustrations, (g) characterization. 
2. How has a bookish flavor been imparted to the whole essay ? 3. 
What hint is given of Lamb's favorite authors ? 4. Find the secret of 
the tone of distinction in the style. 5. Note the friendly attitude of 
Lamb to (a) his readers and (b) his characters. 



VL NEW YEAR'S EVE 

London Magazine, January, 1821 

This essay has a special interest on account of its tone of melan- 
choly skepticism and its connection with Lamb's controversy with his 
friend Robert Southey. The views expressed in this essay as also in 
Grace before Meat and Witches and Other Night Fears had caused the 
Laureate to lament, in a review in the Quarterly, the " absence of a 
sounder religious feeling " in Elia's writings. Speculating in his reply on 
the particular essay which had given color to the charge, Lamb wrote, 
"... Or was it that on the ' New Year ' — in which I have described the 
feelings of the merely natural man, on a consideration of the amazing 
change, which is supposable to take place on our removal from this 
fleshly scene ? " (Talfourd ed.. Vol. I, pp. 338, 339). 



33^ NOTES 

" Lamb seems in this essay," says Canon Ainger, " to have written 
with the express purpose of presenting the reverse side of a passage in 
his favorite Religio Medici. Sir Thomas Browne had there written, ' I 
thank God I have not those strait Hgaments, or narrow obhgations to 
the world, as to dote on life, or be convulsed and tremble at the name 
of death.' . . . Lamb clung to the things he saw and loved — the friends, 
the books, the streets, and crowds around him, and he was not ashamed 
to confess that death meant for him the absence of all these, and that he 
could not look it steadfastly in the face" {Life of Lamb, p. 130). 

45 12. " I saw the skirts [train] of the departing Year " : from Cole- 
ridge's Ode to the Departing Year (1790). 

45 19. *' Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest " : from Pope's 
Odyssey, Book XV, 1. 84. 

46 2. Alice W n: "Alice Winterton " (Lamb's Key), the fair- 
haired Hertfordshire girl, and sweetheart of Lamb's boyhood, whose 
real name was Ann Simmons. The Anna of his sonnets and this Alice, 
also referred to in Blakesmoor and Dream Children, were the same 
person, and it is a tradition of the Widford villagers that Rosamund 
Gray was drawn from this his first and only love. Ann Simmons married 
Bartrum, a wealthy pawnbroker of Princes Street, Leicester Square. 
For the sonnets, see Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, pp. loi, 102. 

46 24. changeling. It was an old superstition that infants were 
sometimes stolen from their cradles by fairies who left their own weak- 
ling elves, called " changelings," in their place. In the Elizabethan 
writers are numerous references to this belief. In Middleton and Row- 
ley's play The Changeling the word means simply " idiot." 

46 34. From what have I not fallen, etc. See Lamb's sonnet on 
Innocence (1795) " " ^® were two pretty babes," etc. 

48 14. seek Lavinian shores : an adaptation of Virgil's ^neid, I, 2, 3, 
Laviniaque venit litora. 

48 30. " Sweet assurance of a look " : from Matthew Royden's Elegy 
on Sir Philip Sidney. 

49 7-8. Phoebus' sickly sister : the moon. In the Greek myths Apollo, 
or Phoebus, was the sun god; Diana, Cynthia, or Phoebe, the moon 
goddess. See Gayley's Classic Myths, pp. 59-65. 

49 8. Canticles : The Song of Solomon viii. 8, 9. 

49 9. I hold with the Persian : the Zoroastrian sun worship had its 
home in Persia. 

49 17. Friar John: a tall, lean, wide-mouthed, long-nosed friar of 
Seville in Rabelais' Gargantua. He swore like a trooper and fought 
furiously with the staff of a cross. 



NOTES 337 

49 25-26. *' lie down with kings and emperors in death " : a quotation 
from Browne's Hydrotaphia, or Urn-Burial. 

50 7. Mr. Cotton, Charles (1630-1687) : a poet, angler, and friend of 
Izaak Walton. He is described as " a cheerful, witty and accomplished 
man." He translated Montaigne's Essays. 

52 1. Helicon: a mountain in Greece, from which flowed the foun- 
tains Hippocrene and Aganippe, the fabled resorts of the Muses. 

52 1. Spa: a general name for European watering places, the oldest 
being situated in a town of that name in Belgium. 

Review Questions. 1. What is the prevailing tone of this essay, — 
cheerful or gloomy, humorous or melancholy ? 2. Where has the author 
used epigram, contrast, short sentences ? 3. What do we learn of his 
religious views, character as a child, tastes, habits, and views ? 4. Note 
the blending of fact with fiction. 5. Explain the biblical allusions, the 
reference to the household gods, and use of " reluct " and " burgeon." 



VII. MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 
London Magazine, February, 1821 

In reprinting this essay in the London Journal Leigh Hunt thus 
introduced it : " Here followeth, gentle reader, the immortal record of 
Mrs. Battle and her whist; a game which the author, as thou wilt see, 
wished that he could play forever; and, accordingly, in the deathless 
pages of his wit, forever will he play it." 

Mr. Percy Fitzgerald and Mr. Charles Kent see a resemblance 
between the character of Mrs. Battle and Lamb's grandmother, Mrs. 
Mary Field, but Mr. Barry Cornwall and Canon Ainger regard Mrs. 
Battle as purely the creature of the author's imagination. All the evi- 
dence of the essays, as well as Lamb's poem The Grandame, supports 
the latter view. 

53 24. his celebrated game of Ombre. The description occurs in the 
third canto of The Rape of the Lock. The terms used in the game — 
spadille, basto, matador, punto, etc. — indicate its Spanish origin. 

53 28. Mr. Bowles : the Rev. William Lisle Bowles, an English 
clergyman of antiquarian tastes. His Sonnets (1789) greatly influenced 
Coleridge, and his edition of Pope (1806) caused a controversy between 
Campbell and Byron. Southey married his sister Caroline. 

54 2. Spadille : the ace of spades in the games of ombre and quad- 
rille. See Pope's Rape of the Lock, Canto III. 



o 



38 NOTES 



54 7. Sans Prendre Vole : a term at cards meaning " without taking 
the play that wins all the tricks." 

54 19. Machiavel, Niccolo (1469-1527): a Florentine author and 
statesman, who was employed in numerous diplomatic missions to the 
petty states of Italy, to France, and to Germany. In 1513 he was 
imprisoned and tortured on a charge of conspiring against the Medici. 
The reference in the text is to his Florentine History. 

55 19. among those clear Vandykes: Sir Anthony Vandyke (1599- 
1641), a Flemish painter who spent many years in England. He was 
knighted by Charles I, to whom he was court painter. 

55 20. Paul Potter (1625-1654) : a Dutch painter of portraits and 
animals. 

55 26. Pam in all his glory ! Pam was the familiar nickname of 
Henry John Temple Viscount Palmerston (i 784-1 865). At this time 
he was Secretary of War, a Tory, a follower of Pitt, and advocate of 
Catholic emancipation. In 1855 he became prim.e minister. 

56 3-4. the arrantest Ephesian journeyman. See Acts of the Apostles 
xix. 24-41. 

56 5. our ancestors' money. Cf. Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, Book I, 
Chap. V, p. 35, MacMechan ed. : " A simple invention it was in the old- 
world grazier, — sick of lugging his slow ox about the country till he got 
it bartered for com or oil, — to take a piece of leather, and thereon 
scratch or stamp the mere figure of an ox {ox pecus) ; put it in his pocket, 
and call it Pecunia, money." 

56 11. old Walter Plumer. See notes on The South-Sea Hottse, p. 324. 

59 12. Bridget Elia : Mary Lamb, sister of the author. 

59 34. Bridget and I should be ever playing : compare with the thought 
in this last paragraph the art doctrine of arrested life in Keats's Ode 
07i a Grecian Urn. 

Review Questions. 1. The characterization of Mrs. Battle by means 
of the game : {a) her strenuous personality ; {b) her looks and bearing ; 
{c) her literaiy tastes; (^) her aggressive, argumentative tone. 2. The 
philosophy of the game of whist with relation to human nature. 3. Com- 
parison of whist with other games ; compare Poe's argument for the 
superiority of whist over chess in his Murders in the Rue Morgue. 

4. Explain the references to painting, politics, literature, and the Bible. 

5. Find an example of Lamb's religious tolerance. 6. Examine the 
structure of the essay, especially the parts where the author addresses 
Mrs. Battle. 



NOTES 339 

VIII. VALENTINE'S DAY 

The Indicator, February 14, 1821 

This hitherto untraced essay of Eha, the source of which is now for 
the first time pointed out, appeared originally in No. 71 of Leigh Hunt's 
Indicator, where it may be found at pp. 150-152 of the second volume, 
signed, according to Lamb's not infrequent custom, with four asterisks. 
William Hone, in his Every Day Book, under date 14th of February, 
transcribed the whole paper with this prefix : " Attend we upon Elia. 
Hark, how triumphantly that noble herald of the College of Kindness 
proclaims the day ! " (Kent). 

60]. old Bishop Valentine: a Christian martyr of the reign of the 
Emperor Claudius (about 270 a.d). The custom of sending love mis- 
sives on the day of his festival, February 14, originated in connection 
with the heathen worship of Juno at that time. Its association with 
the saint is wholly accidental. 

60 2. Arch-flamen of Hymen : chief priest of the Greek and Roman 
god of marriage. 

60 9-10. Jerome, Ambrose, Austin, or St. Augustine : fathers of the 
Latin church in the 4th century a.d. 

60 9-11. Cyril, Origen : early fathers of the Greek church. 

60 11-12. Bull, Parker, Whitgift : prelates of the English church, men- 
tioned because of the ecclesiastical tyranny of a purely personal nature 
which they exercised. 

60 1 4. " Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings " : Paradise Lost, I, 768. 
61 12-13. " gives a very echo to the throne where hope is seated " : a 

paraphrase from Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, II, iv. 

61 17-18. the raven himself was hoarse : Macbeth, I, v, 39. 

61 23. " having been will always be " : a free quotation from Words- 
worth's Ode on Intimations of I??imortality, st. x, 11. 14-15. 

62 5. E. B. : Edward Francis Burney (1760-1848), a book illustrator 
and portrait painter. He was a cousin of the novelist Madame D'Arblay 
(Miss Burney). He illustrated the novels of Richardson and Smollett, 
also the Arabian Nights and various periodicals. 

62 25. Pyramus and Thisbe : this famous story of the lovers of Baby- 
lon is told in Ovid's Metamorphoses, IV, 55-166. See also Gayley's 
Classic Myths, § 78, and Chaucer's Legend of Good Women. It is the 
subject of burlesque in the subplot of Midsummer Nighfs Dream. 

62 25. Dido: the story of the unhappy queen of Carthage is found 
in Ovid's Metamorphoses, XIV, 2, and in Virgil's ^neid, Books I, II, 



340 NOTES 

and III. It was taken as the subject of plays by Gager, Rightwise, and 
Marlowe. 

62 26. Hero and Leander. S&& M.ViSz.evi?,''^ De Amore Ilerois et Leajtdri 
and Ovid's Heroides, XVIII, XIX. The story is treated in our literature 
in Marlowe's Hero and Leander and in Keats's On a Picture of Leander. 

62 26. swans more than sang in Cayster : the Cayster, or Little Mean- 
der, is a swift river of Asia Minor, and according to the poets was much 
frequented by swans. See Ovid's Metamorphoses^ II, 253 ; Martial's 
Epigrams, I, 54; Homer's Iliad, II, 461 ; and Virgil's Georgics, V, 384. 

62 28. Iris dipt the woof : the reference is to the variety of colors used 
by the artist, Iris being the goddess of the rainbow in Greek mythology. 

63 11. "Good-morrow to my Valentine": Lamb had in mind the 
mad-song of Ophelia in Hamlet, IV, v : 

To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day, 

All in the morning betime, 
And I a maid at your window, 

To be your Valentine. 

Review Questions. 1. What is the secret of the humor in the second 
paragraph ? 2. By what devices does the author give dignity to the sub- 
ject ? 3. What is the effect of the classical allusions ? Explain each. 

4. What do the quotations contribute to the tone of the essay ? 

5. Note easy transition to the fourth paragraph which is a short story. 

6. Is this ending a violation of unity in the structure of the essay ? 

7. Rhetorical classification of " the world meets nobody half way," and 
" Iris dipt the woof." Find other figures. 8. What do you learn here 
of Lamb's gifts or limitations as a story-teller ? 

IX. A QUAKERS' MEETING 

London Magazine, April, 1821 

Both Leigh Hunt and Thomas Hood were impressed with Lamb's 
Quakerlike demeanor and plainness of dress. In the summer of 1822 
Lamb met Bernard Barton, a Quaker poet, who held a clerkship in a 
London bank. This meeting resulted in a delightful correspondence 
which extended from 1822 to 1828. Lamb once said to his friend, "I 
hope I am half a Quaker myself," and Ainger has especially noted 
Lamb's strong native sympathy for Quaker customs. 

63 16. * * Still-born Silence ! " etc. : a quotation from Richard Flecknoe's 
dramatic pastoral. Love's Dominion (1634). It is one of the selections 
in Lamb's Specimens. 



NOTES 341 

64 10. nor pour wax into the little cells of thy ears : a reference to 
the story of Ulysses, who stopped up the ears of the crew with wax 
that they might not hear the song of the Sirens. 

64 18-19. " Boreas, and Cesias, and Argestes loud " : Paradise Lost, X, 
699. 

64 33-34. The Carthusian is bound, etc : a monastic order founded by 
St. Bruno, who retired in 1086 with six companions to the solitude of La 
Chartreuse near Grenoble. They wore rude clothing, lived on coarse 
bread and vegetables, and maintained the rule of unbroken silence, 
night watching, and frequent prayer. 

65 9. Master Zimmermann. See note p. 335. 

65 19. " sands, ignoble things," etc. : from Francis Beaumont's Lines 
on the Tombs in Westminster Abbey. Cf. Addison's Thoughts in West- 
minster Abbey, and Irving's description of the Abbey in The Sketch 
Book. 

65 26. " How reverend is the view," etc. : a free quotation from Con- 
greve's Mourning Bride, II, i. 

6627. James Naylor (1618-1660) : a Puritan fanatic and Quaker 
of Yorkshire. Under the delusion that he was the reincarnation of 
Christ, he entered Bristol, October, 1655, on horseback, naked, in 
imitation of Christ's entry into Jerusalem. After being convicted of 
blasphemy by Parliament and tortured, he recanted. 

67 6. John Woolman (1720-1772) : an illiterate tailor of New Jersey. 
Lamb refers to the Journal of the Life, Gospel and Labours of this 
humble Quaker, of whom Crabb Robinson said, " His religion is love ; 
his whole existence, and all his passions were love." 

68 14-15. the Loves fled the face of Dis : refers to the rape of Proser- 
pine by Pluto in the Vale of Enna. 

6821. caverns of Trophonius : a famous oracle in a cave in Bceotia, 
from which those who went to consult the god always returned dejected. 
Hence arose the proverb applied to a melancholy person, " He has 
been consulting the oracle of Trophonius." 

68 30-31. *' forty feeding like one " : from Wordsworth's little extem- 
pore poem The Cock is crowing, etc., a favorite with Joanna Baillie. 

69 3-4. the Shining Ones. See Pilgrim'' s Progress, Part 1. 

Review Questions. 1. What evidence does this essay give of careful 
preparation of material ? 2. Note finished elaboration of the style. 
Is it painstaking ? suggestive .'' bookish ? 3. What appealed to Lamb 
in the Quaker character.? 4. Was he intellectually in sympathy with 
them ? 5. Find echoes from literature sacred and profane. 



342 NOTES 

X. MY RELATIONS 

London Magazine, June, 1821 

69 16. I had an aunt. This was a sister of Lamb's father, who lived 
in her brother's home and contributed something to the family income. 
She died in February, 1797. Lamb wrote a poem in her honor. 

69 23. Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471) : a German mystic and ascetic, 
the reputed author of De Iniitatione Christi. 

69 24-25. matins and complines : canonical hours for divine service in 
the ^loman Catholic Church, the latter being observed at midnight and 
the former shortly after. 

70 18. Brother, or sister, I never had any : a literary fiction intended 
to mislead, for Lamb is immediately to describe his brother and sister 
as cousins. 

70 19. Elizabeth. Two daughters of John and Elizabeth Lamb were 
christened by that name, both dying in infancy, 

70 24. James and Bridget Elia: John and Mary Lamb, brother and 
sister of the author. John, who was Charles's senior by twelve years, 
held a clerkship in the South-Sea House, where he occupied bachelor 
chambers. Mary kept house for Charles. 

70 34. the pen of Yorick : Yorick is the pen name of Laurence Sterne in 
his Sentimental Journey . It is the name of the eccentric parson in Tristram 
Shandy who claims descent from Shakespeare's Yorick ! See Hamlet, V. 

71 7. the phlegm of my cousin's doctrine, etc. In early times the four 
principal types of temperament, the sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, and 
melancholic, were supposed to depend on the preponderance of various 
humors in the system. 

71 24-25. that piece of tender pastoral Domenichino : a painting by the 
Italian artist Domenico Zampieri (1581-1641). Among his works are 
*' Diana and her Nymphs," " Adam and Eve," " St. Jerome," " The 
Communion of St. Jerome," and " The Martyrdom of St. Agnes." 

71 31. Charles of Sweden : the celebrated soldier king, Charles XII 
(1682-1718). 

72 4. the Cham of Tartary : a powerful Eastern prince frequently re- 
ferred to by the Elizabethan dramatists as the type of haughty tyranny. 

72 15. John Murray (1778-1843): a well-known London publisher, 
founder of the Quarterly Review. 

73 4. Chanticleer : the name of the cock in the old beast epics and 
fablieaux, e.g. Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale, Roman du Renard, and 
Reinecke Fuchs. 



NOTES 343 

73 6. Eton : one of the most famous schools in England, situated 
on the Thames twenty-two miles west of London. It was founded by 
Henry VI in 1440. 

73 18. Claude Lorrain (i 600-1 682) : a French landscape painter. 
See Van Dyke's History of Painting, pp. 136, 137. 

73 19. Hobbima (1638 ?-i709) : a Dutch landscape painter. See 
Van Dyke's History of Painting, p. 216. 

73 20. Christie, Alexander (1807-1860) : a Scottish painter who had 
a studio in London. 

73 20. Phillips, Thomas (i 770-1845): an English portrait painter, 
R.A. 1808; professor of painting, R.A. 1824-1832. 

73 26. Westward Ho ! a cry of the watermen on the Thames in old 
times indicating the direction of their boats. It is the title of a comedy 
by Webster and Dekker, and of a novel by Charles Kingsley. 

73 26. Pall Mall : a fashionable promenade in London leading from 
Trafalgar Square to the Green Park. See Hare's London, II, 44. 

74 6. " Cynthia of the minute " : from Pope's Epistles, II, 1. 20. 
Gynthia is the moon goddess. 

74 7. Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520): the celebrated Italian painter. 
Among his chief paintings are " The Sistine Madonna," " The Trans- 
figuration," " Marriage of the Virgin," " La Belle Jardiniere," " St. 
George and the Dragon," " St. Michael," " Apollo and Marsyas," " The 
Vision of Ezekiel," and the Vatican cartoons. 

74 11. the Carracci: Ludovico (i 555-1619), Agostino (i 558-1602), 
and Annibale (i 560-1609), three Italian painters of Bologna. 

74 13. Lucca [Luca] Giordano (i 632-1 705) : a Neapolitan artist. 

74 14. Carlo Maratti (1625-1713) : an Italian painter of Madonnas 
and other religious work, described as " meretricious." 

74 18. "set forth in pomp," etc.: Shakespeare's Richard II, V, i, 
78-80. 

7420. Hallowmas: All Hallows or All Saints' Day, November i. 

7513-14. Thomas Clarkson (i 760-1846) : an English abolitionist, 
author of a History of the Abolitioft of the Slave Trade. 

76 8. " Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire " : from one 
of Lamb's early sonnets. 

Review Questions. 1. Study characterization of the aunt. 2. In the 
character of the brother note the blending of {a) the man of the world, 
{b) the sentimentahst, and {c) the dilettante ; also the mingled tone of 
irony and kindness. 3. What method does Lamb follow: the subjec- 
tive, objective, psychological, humorous, satiric, burlesque ? 4. Is he 



344 NOTES 

frank, or does he keep back his brother's less agreeable traits ? 5. In 
his references to art does Lamb impress you as an amateur or a con- 
noisseur? 6. What is the author's position in regard to cruelty to 
animals ? 7. Find examples of appeal to sense of sight, of hearing, of 
smell, of taste. 8. This essay may profitably be made the basis of a 
study of Italian art in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 

XI. MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 

London Magazine, July, 1821 

76 9. Bridget Ella: Mary Lamb, who was ten years older than 
Charles. Mr. Ernest Rhys says, " It is to his sister Mary that Lamb 
devotes in ' Elia ' his most loving grace of description ; to his sister, 
who as Bridget Elia, lives in our hearts and minds forever." 

76 15. the rash king's offspring. For the story of Jephthah's daughter see 
Judges xi. 30-40. See also Tennyson's Dream of Fair Wojnen, 11. 197-248. 

76 16. " with a difference " : an heraldic term. See Hamlet, IV, v, 182. 
7624. Burton. See note on p. 334. 

77 9. the Religio Medici. See note on p. 336. 

77 14. Margaret Newcastle. See note, pp. 334-335- 

78 12-13. spacious closet of good old English reading : the library was 
that of Samuel Salt. See The Old Benchers. 

78 24-25. She is excellent to be at play with. Charles and Mary usu- 
ally played piquet together. 

7929. "But thou, that didst appear so fair": from Wordsworth's 
Yarrow Visited. 

81 6. B. F. : Barron Field (1786-1846), a lawyer who accompanied 
the Lambs on this visit. He is referred to as "a very dear friend" in 
The Old and the New Schoolmaster, and the Distant Correspondents is 
addressed to him. He usually attended the Wednesday parties. He 
became Judge of the Supreme Court in Sydney, New South Wales, and 
Chief Justice at Gibraltar. 

Review Questions. 1. Examine the rhetorical effects in the passage 
beginning " Still the air breathed balmy." Mr. Ainger calls attention 
to " the almost unique beauty of this prose idyll." 2. Why are there 
fewer literary allusions in this essay than in previous ones ? 3. Can 
you find the secret of the effects produced in this character sketch of 
Mary Lamb mentioned by Mr. Rhys ? 4. Find touches of the humorous 
and pathetic. 5. What were the peculiar relations of the author and 
his sister ? 6. Find examples of graceful transition. 



NOTES 345 

XII. IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 

London Magazine, August, 1821 

This essay was originally entitled somewhat oddly and clumsily, Jews, 
Quakers, Scotchmen and other Imperfect Sym^pathies. 

82 5. author of the Religio Medici : Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), 
one of the writers who most influenced Lamb. See Introduction, p. xxix. 
The passage quoted occurs in Part II, sec. i. 

82 6-7. notional and conjectural essences : the beings of fancy and con- 
jecture. Speculating about the world of spirits, in Religio Medici, Part 
I, sec. xxxiii, Browne says, " I could easily believe, that not only whole 
countries, but particular persons, have their tutelary and guardian 
angels." 

82 14. "Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky [pole]": quoted 
imperfectly from Milton's invocation of Urania in Paradise Lost, VII, 23. 

83 (footnote) Heywood. See note to essay on Elizabethan Dramatists. 

83 8. anti-Caledonian. Caledonia was the old poetic name of Scot- 
land. 

84 15-16. His Minerva is born in panoply. In Greek mythology, Pallas 
Athena, the goddess of wisdom, sprang full-armed from the brain of 
Zeus. 

84 25. true touch. Here " touch " means tried metal of proved 
quality. Cf. Coriolanus, IV, i, " my friends of noble touch." The 
word is also used of (i) a stone to test the quality of metals, and (2) the 
trial itself. 

85 12. John Buncle. See note on p. 334. 

85 19. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519); a great Italian painter, archi- 
tect, sculptor, musician, and scientist. The '* print of a graceful female " 
was from his famous Vierge aux Rochers, or " Virgin of the Rocks," of 
which there are replicas in the Louvre at Paris and in the National 
Gallery in London. 

86 1. Burns, Robert (17 59-1 796) : the celebrated lyric poet of Scot- 
land. 

86 18. Thomson, James (1700-1748). The author of The Seasons and 
The Castle of Indolence, though a Scotchman, does not use the Scotch 
dialect in his poems. 

8619. Smollett, Tobias (1721-1771): a Scotch novelist bom near 
Dumbarton, and author of Roderick Random and Humphrey Clinker, 
which is told in a series of letters, and is by many critics considered his 
best. He also wrote a History of England, an independent work. 



346 NOTES 

which has been frequently printed as a continuation of Hume's History, 
which closes at the Revolution. 

86 20. Rory and his companion : Roderick Random and his school- 
fellow, the barber, Hugh Strap, who are outrageously gulled on their 
arrival in London. 

86 26. Stonehenge : the remnant of a prehistoric Celtic monument of 
a religious nature, which stands in Salisbury Plain, in Wiltshire. Seven- 
teen great stones, connected in part by slabs resting on their tops, 
inclose an ellipse, in the middle of which is a slab called the altar. 
See Rhys's Celtic Heathendom, pp. 194, 195. 

87 1. They date beyond the pyramids. Lamb had in mind the pyra- 
mids of Gizeh, the northernmost surviving group of a range of about 
seventy pyramids extending from Aba Roash south to Meidoun, The 
group dates from about 4000 B.C. De Quincey makes similar use of the 
pyramids to connote great age in his Confessions and Daughter of 
Lebanon. 

87 5. the story of Hugh of Lincoln. The legend of the torture and 
murder of this little Christian boy by the Jews of Lincoln in 1255 is 
told by Matthew Paris, and is the subject of several old ballads in 
Percy's Reliques, the Golden Treasury Ballad Book, and Child's Ballads. 
See also Chaucer's Prioresses Tale. 

87 27. B : John Braham (1774-1856) : the most popular tenor 

singer of his day in London ; author of The Death of Nelsott and other 
songs. " That glorious singer," wrote Lamb to Manning on January 2, 
1810, "Braham, one of my lights, is fled. He was for a season. He 
was a rare composition of the Jew, the gentleman and the angel, yet all 
these elements mixed up so kindly in him, that you could not tell which 
preponderated; but he is gone, and one Phillips is engaged instead " 
{Letters of Charles Lamb, p. 241). 

87 32. the Shibboleth : a secret password. For its origin see Judges 
xii. 1-6. 

884. Kemble, John Philip (1757-1823): the great tragic actor, who 
succeeded Garrick as the foremost interpreter of Shakespeare's heroes. 
" He was a stately actor, with a somewhat stilted and declamatory 
style." The still more celebrated Sarah Siddons was his sister, and 
Charles Kemble, the father of Fanny Kemble, his brother, who was a 
frequent guest at Lamb's parties. 

88 12. Jael. She slew Sisera in her tent by smiting a nail into his 
temples. See Judges iv. 18-22. 

8817. Fuller, Thomas (1608-1661): the author of two well-known 
books, The Worthies of England and The Holy and the Profane State. 



NOTES 347 

His style, which greatly influenced Lamb, is full of solemn, fantastic 
quips and quaint conceits. 

882]. Quaker ways. " Do ' Friends ' allow puns," — wrote Lamb to 
his Quaker friend, Bernard Barton, — " verbal equivocations ? They are 
unjustly accused of it, and I did my best in the Itnperfect Sympathies to 
vindicate them." 

88 27. Desdemona : the young and beautiful heroine of Shakespeare's 
tragedy of Othello. " To live with him " is a phrase in I, iii, 249. 

88 32-33. the salads which Eve dressed for the angel. See Fa?'adise 
Lost, V, 315-450- 

8833. Evelyn, John, D.C.L. (1620-1706): an English author, who 
wrote much on the Arundel marbles, Greenwich Hospital, gardening, 
numismatics, etc. He was a Royalist during the Civil War and became 
secretary of the Royal Society. Lamb's reference is to a passage in his 
Complete Gardener. 

88 34. " To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse " : a free paraphrase 
from Paradise Regained, II, 278. 

90 11. Penn, William (1644-1718) : the founder of Pennsylvania, and 
author of No Cross No Crown, a book which Lamb liked immensely, pro- 
nouncing it " a most capital book, good thoughts in good language." 

90 15. I was travelling in a stage-coach, etc. This anecdote called 
forth a remonstrance from Barton's sister, to whom Lamb replied in a 
letter of March 11, 1823, explaining that the adventure had not hap- 
pened to him but had been related to him by the eminent surgeon. Sir 
Anthony Carlyle, who was an eyewitness of the incident. 

90 34. The steps went up. Coaches and private carriages were for- 
merly provided with folding steps. 

Review Questions. 1. Note the perfect construction of this essay. 

2. Study the satire and humor in the paragraph on the Scotch. 

3. Explain and comment on the figure employed in " His Minerva is 
born in panoply." 4. Is there any animosity in Lamb's criticism of 
Scotch character? 5. Note with what critical insight and delicacy 
Lamb suggests Smollett's superiority to Hume. 6. What accounts for 
the author's admiration for Burns and Thomson ? 7. Note the inge- 
nuity and subtle suggestiveness of the close of the paragraph on Jews. 
8. Analyze effects, plan, climax, character sketching, etc., in the short 
story at the close of the essay. 



348 NOTES 

XIII. THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 

Londo7t Magazitie^ September, 1821 

" The essay on The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple is one of the 
most varied and beautiful pieces of prose that English literature can 
boast. Eminently, moreover, does it show us Lamb as the product of 
two different ages, — the child of the Renaissance of the sixteenth cen- 
tury and of that of the nineteenth. It is as if both Spenser and Words- 
worth had laid hands of blessing upon his head" (Ainger). 

91 14. the Temple : in the Middle Ages a lodge of the Knights Tem- 
plars of the Holy Sepulcher, which was a military and religious order. 
A later building of the order, dating from 1184, is the Temple in the 
Strand. The Templars were suppressed in the reign of Edward II, and 
the house, after passing through various hands, reverted to the crown. 
In 1338 it went to the Knights Hospitalers of St. John, who leased it 
to students of the common law. On the same site now stand the tw^o 
Inns of Court, called the Inner and Middle Temples, owned by a legal 
society which grants admission to the bar. The Outer Temple was 
converted into the Exeter Buildings. 

91 21. " There when they came," etc. : from Spenser's Prothalamium, 
St. viii. 

92 5. " Of building strong," etc. : an improvised line referring to the 
" Paper Buildings " facing King's Bench Walk in the Temple. 

92 11. Twickenham Naiades. Twickenham, a town where Pope lived 
and had a grotto, was higher up the river above the " trade-polluted 
waters," and therefore where, to the imagination, river nymphs would 
prefer to dwell. 

92 13. that fine Elizabethan hall : the hall of the Middle Temple. 

92 25. "Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand," etc.: from Shake- 
speare's Sonnet, civ. 

93 4. the horologe of the first world. The ancient horologe, or sun dial, 
was an instrument for showing the time of day from the shadow of a 
style or gnomon, which was parallel with the earth's axis, on a graduated 
arc or surface called the dial plate. There were also astral and lunar 
dials. Mr. Richard Le Gallienne, in his Old Country House, quotes from 
this essay and speaks of the dial as " the natural clock by which to do 
the beautiful work of idleness. " 

93 8-9. ' * carved it out quaintly in the sun. " S ee j Henry VI, II, v, 24. 

93 12. Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678): joint secretary with Milton 

under Cromwell, and the last of the lyric poets of the romantic age. 



NOTES 349 

For the influence of his lovely garden poems on Lamb, see Ainger's 
Life, p. 1 08. 

93 17. "What wonderous life is this I lead!" from Marvell's The 
Garden. The entire poem is number iii in the Golden Treasury of 
English Lyrics. 

94 20. Lincoln's Inn: one of the Inns of Court, occupied by legal 
societies which provide instruction and examinations for candidates to 
the bar. See Hare's London, Vol. I, p. 59. 

95 12. The old benchers : the legal term applied to the senior and 
governing members of the Inns of Court. 

95 17. The roguish eye of J 11. Jekyll, the famous wit among the 

benchers, was the master in chancery ; called to the bench in 1805, died 
in 1837. 

95 19. Thomas Coventry: called to the bench in 1766, died in 1797. 

95 26. an Elisha bear. See 2 Kings ii. 23, 24. 
962. Samuel Salt. See note on p. 329. 

96 14. his man Lovel : the author's father, John Lamb, Sr., who 
died 1797. The name Lovel occurs in Murphy's The Citizen (1757), 
Bayley's The Mistletoe Bough, Clara Reeve's Old English Baron (1777), 
and Townley's High Life Below Stairs (1759), from any one of which 
Lamb may have taken it. There is also a Lovell mentioned in News- 
papers Thirty fve Years Ago, whose name may have suggested the 
pseudonym of his father. 

96 27. the unfortunate Miss Blandy : the principal in a celebrated trial 
for murder in 1752. Her father, a Henley attorney, refused to allow 
her to receive the attentions of Captain Cranstoun, an adventurer. 
Mr. Blandy died from the effects of a powder given him by his daughter, 
who claimed that it was a love philter to change his feelings toward her 
lover. She was convicted and executed at Oxford in April, 1752. See 
Leslie's Our River. 

97 15-16. Not so, thought Susan P : Susannah Pierson, sister of the 

bencher mentioned below. As a mark of his regard Salt bequeathed 
her the works of Pope, Swift, Shakespeare, Addison, and Steele. 

98 9-10. the mad Elwes breed : John Elwes ( 1 7 1 4-1 789) , a noted miser, 
the son of a wealthy English brewer. He had a morbid disinclination 
to spend money upon himself, but was extravagant in gaming and 
speculation. 

98 28. his "flapper": in Swift's Voyage to Lap uta, a, family officer, 
whose business it was " gently to strike with his bladder the mouth of 
him who is to speak, and the right ear of him or them to whom the 
speaker addresseth himself." 



350 NOTES 

99 13. a face as gay as Garrick's : David Garrick (1717-1779), the 
famous English actor and manager of Drury Lane Theater, where he 
brought out twenty-four of Shakespeare's plays, besides many modem 
comedies. Dr. Johnson said that " his death eclipsed the gaiety of 
nations." A portrait of John Lamb in Procter's Memoir of Charles 
La7nb shows some resemblance to Garrick. 

99 15-16. next to Swift and Prior. For a discussion of Swift's verse 
see Gosse's Literature of the Eighteenth Century^ pp. 152-153; and for 
that of Prior, Austin Dobson's essay in Ward's English Poets, Vol. Ill, 
pp. 18, 19. 

99 16. moulded heads. Canon Ainger mentions a medallion portrait 
of Salt done by John Lamb in plaster of Paris, and now in the posses- 
sion of Mrs. Arthur Tween, a daughter of Randall Norris. 

99 27. " a remnant [semblance] most forlorn of what he was " : a free 
quotation from Lamb's own lines "written on the day of my aunt's 
funeral" (1797). 

99 29. He was greatest ... in Bayes : a coxcomb in Buckingham's 
farce, The Rehersal, intended as a caricature of the poet laureate, 
Dryden. The character was originally called Bilboa in ridicule of 
Sir Robert Howard, but was changed when Howard became a friend of 
the author. Dryden in turn satirized Buckingham as Zimri in Absalo?n 
afid Achitophel. 

100 9. Peter Pierson : called to the bench in 1800 and died in 1808. 
Though friends at the bar, he and Salt were not contemporaries on the 
bench. 

100 17-18. resembling that of our great philanthropist. Probably John 
Howard is meant. 

100 20. Daines Barrington (i 722-1800) : the son of Viscount Barring- 
ton. He was called to the bench in 1777. He was an enthusiastic 
naturalist and antiquarian, and wrote The Naturalist'' s Calendar and 
Observations on the Statutes. 

100 29. Barton, Thomas: called to the bench in 1775, died 1791. 

100 34. Read, John: called to the bench in 1792, died 1794. 

101 1. Twopeny, Richard (i 728-1809). He was a stockbroker to the 
Bank of England, and occupied bachelor chambers in the Temple, but 
was never a bencher, as Lamb supposed. 

101 2. Wharry, John: called to the bench in 1801, died in 1810. 
101 16. Jackson, Richard. On account of his learning and memory 

he was given the sobriquet of the Omniscient. See Boswell's Life of 
fohnson, April, 1776. He went on the bench in 1770, became a member 
of Parliament and a minister of the crown in 1782. He died in 1787. 



NOTES 351 

101 19. Friar Bacon: Roger Bacon (i2i4?-i294), a learned English 
philosopher and scientist, author of Opus Majus (1265), a scientific 
treatise written on request of Pope Clement IV. In Greene's play 
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay he is a great magician possessing super- 
natural knowledge and power. See Schneider's Roger Bacon (1873). 

101 29. Mingay with the iron hand : James Mingay, an eminent king's 
counsel, noted for his *' oratory of infinite wit and most excellent fancy." 
He went on the bench in 1785 and died in 181 2. He was a rival of Erskine. 

102 3. Michael Angelo's Moses : a gigantic and imposing statue in the 
church of San Pietro in Vincoli, in Rome. His right hand upholds 
the tables of the law and clutches the long beard, and the hair is 
arranged in such a way as to give a suggestion of horns. 

102 4. Baron Maseres (1731-1824) filled for fifty years the post of 
Cursitor Baron of the Exchequer. He continued throughout life to 
wear the costume of the reign in which he was born. 

102 13. I saw Gods, as "old men," etc. See i Samuel xxviii. 13, 14. 
Cf. Lamb's mention of the picture of the Witch of Endor in Witches 
and Other Night-Fears. 

102 28i R. N. : Randall Norris (1751-1827), for many years librarian 
and subtreasurer of the Inner Temple, where he resided for over fifty 
years. Lamb wrote of him, " He was my friend and my father's friend 
all the life I can remember. Old as I am waxing, in his eyes I was 
still the child he first knew me. To the last he called me Charley. I 
have none to call me Charley now." 

103 14. Urban : the pseudonym of the editor of the Gentleman's 
Magazine (founded 1731). 

103 20-21. " ye yourselves are old " : Lear, II, vii, 194. 

103 22. future Hookers and Seldens. Richard Hooker (i 553-1600), 
the author of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, was a Master of the 
Temple, and John Selden (i 584-1654), the jurist, antiquary, and orien- 
talist, had quarters in the Inner Temple 

Review Questions. 1. What were Lamb's special gifts for writing 
biographical sketches ? 2. In which of the benchers does the author 
show peculiar interest } 3. Note the tender humor of his portraiture 
of his father, and contrast with that of his brother John. 4. Lamb has 
been called " the last of the Elizabethans " ; find grounds for this 
statement in this essay. 5. Compare characterization of Coventry with 
Irving's Wooten van Twiller. 6. Examine Lamb's use of Italianized, 
frescoes, quadrate, coeval, spinous, cue, windfall, moidore, hunks, female, 
quips, and younkers. What can be said of the author's vocabulary ? 



352 NOTES 

XIV. WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS 

London Magazine, October, 1821 

This essay was the unfortunate cause of the controversy between 
Lamb and his old friend Southey. In an article entitled Progress of 
Infidelity, attacking Leigh Hunt and Hazlitt in the Quarterly Review 
for July, 1823, Southey spoke of unbelievers not always being honest 
enough to express their real feelings, and charged them with the 
inability to divest themselves of fear even when they had renounced 
hope. " There is a remarkable proof of this in End's Essays," he wrote, 
" a book which wants only a sounder religious feeling to be as delight- 
ful as it is original. In that upon Witches and Other Night-Fears he 
says, ' It is not book or picture, or the stories of foolish servants which 
create these terrors in children.' " Southey then quoted the passage 
about little Thornton Hunt, and used it as a text for criticising severely 
the irreligious training of Leigh Hunt's children. TaKourd explains 
y/ that Southey intended by this reference to increase the sale of Lamb's 
book. Lamb felt this slur so deeply that he wrote to Barton on 
July 10, " Southey has attacked Elia on the score of infidelity. . . . He 
might have spared an old friend such a construction of a few careless 
flights, that meant no harm to religion." In the London for October 
Lamb published a long open letter to Southey in which he expostulated 
with him for doing him an unfriendly ofhce, and defended himself and 
Hunt vigorously. Southey read the article with surprise and grief. 
Lamb soon recovered from his resentment, apologized to his friend, 
received a visit from him, and reestablished their friendship. 

104 11. maidens pined away. A common charge against witches was 
that of causing their victims to waste away by making waxen images 
of them and applying tortures to these. See Reginald Scot's Discoverie 
of Witchcraft (1584, recently edited by Dr. Nicholson), XII, 16; also 
Bullen's edition of Middleton's Witch, a play with which Lamb was 
familiar. This superstition is the motive of Rossetti's ballad Sister 
Helen. 

104 23. symbolized by a goat. See Matthew xxv. 33. 

105 9. Prospero : a wise and good magician in The Tempest. See 
I, ii, for the reference. 

105 15. Guyon, Sir : the knight of temperance in Spenser's Faerie 
Queene. See the account of the siege of the House of Temperance, 
Book II, Canto xi. 

105 29. Witch raising up Samuel. See i Samuel xxviii. 



NOTES 353 

106 14. Saint George : the patron saint of England, the same as the 
Red Cross Knight in Book I of the Faerie Queene. The exploit 
referred to was slaying the monster Error. See Book I, Canto i, 20-26. 

108 8. " Headless bear, blackman, or ape " : from Burton's Anatomy 
of Melancholy, p. 1 11. 

108 12. Dear little T. H. : Leigh Hunt's oldest son, Thornton. 

108 17-18. ** thick-coming fancies " : from Macbeth, V, iii, 38. 

108 22-23. Gorgons : Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale, three sisters with 
wings, brazen claws, enormous teeth, scaly bodies, and hair entwined 
with serpents. Whoever looked upon them was turned to stone. 
Hydras : the mythological hydra slain by Hercules was a many-headed 
water serpent which inhabited the marshes of Lerna in Argolis. Chi- 
mseras : the chimera of mythology was a strange, fire-breathing mon- 
ster of Lycia, killed by Bellerophon. the Harpies : Celasno, Aello, 
and Ocypete, the daughters of Neptune and Terra. They are repre- 
,sented as disgusting winged monsters, of fierce aspect, with the bodies 
of vultures, the heads of maidens, and hands armed with claws. They 
were ministers of the vengeance of the gods. 

108 28. " Names, whose sense we see not," etc. : from Spenser's Epi- 
thalamhim, 11. 343, 344. 

109 6. "Like one that on a lonesome road," etc.: from Coleridge's 
Ancient Mariner, 11. 446-451. 

110 5. Helvellyn : the second peak in height (31 18 feet) in the lake 
district in Cumberland. 

110 10. "Where Alph, the sacred river, runs [ran]," etc. : from Cole- 
ridge's Kubla Khan, 1. 3. 

110 12. Barry Cornwall. See note on p. 320. 

110 24. Ino Leucothea : the wife of Athamas, king of Thebes. To 
escape from her mad husband she threw herself into the sea and was 
changed into a sea goddess. 

Review Questions. 1. Examine the fine topic sentence in paragraph 2. 
2. Show the perfect keeping between Lamb's subject and his treatment 
of it. How does he get his weird effects ? 3. Find an echo of the 
leading thought in Wordsworth's Ode on Intimations of Immortality. 
4. Compare with Lamb's " night fancies " De Quincey's architectural 
dreams. See my edition of the Co7tfessions, pp. 129-135. 5. Is there 
evidence of the influence of the style of the Bible ? of Milton .? 



354 NOTES 



XV. GRACE BEFORE MEAT 
London Magazine, November, 1821 

In Lamb's reply to Southey in the London for October, 1823, 
regarding the laureate's attack on the Essays of Elia, he said : " Per- 
haps the paper on Saying Graces was the obnoxious feature. I have 
endeavored there to rescue a voluntary duty — good in place, but never, 
as I remember, literally commanded — from the charge of an undecent 
formality. Rightly taken, sir, that paper was not against graces, but 
want of grace ; not against ceremony, but the carelessness and sloven- 
liness so often observed in the performance of it." 

111 29. the Faerie Queene : the great allegorical and romantic poem 
by Edmund Spenser (1552 .''-1599). 

112 5-6. Utopian : a word derived from Sir Thomas More's political 
romance Utopia, i.e. Nowhere (15 16), which gives an account of an 
imaginary island, the seat of an ideal commonwealth. It means 
therefore "impracticable," "visionary." 

112 5-6, Rabelsesian : an epithet derived from the name of Fran9ois 
Rabelais (1495 ?-i553)» whose books were noted for their buffoonery, 
riotous license, and their biting satire on the religious corruptions of 
the time. 

113 26. still small voice. See i Kings xix. 12, 

113 29. Jeshurun waxed fat. See Deuteronomy xxxii. 15. 

113 31. Celaeno. See Virgil's ^neid, III, 245-257, and note p. 353. 

114 15. " A table richly spread in regal mode," etc. : from Paradise 
Regained, II, 340-347. 

11428. Heliogabalus : a Roman emperor (204-222 a.d.) notorious for 
his gluttony and debauchery. 

115 3. "As appetite is wont to dream, " etc. : from Paradise Regained, 
II, 264-278. 

11615. C : Coleridge. 

11626. The author of the Rambler. Dr. Samuel Johnson published 
the Rambler, a periodical after the plan of the Spectator, in London, 
1750-1752, For a graphic account of Dr. Johnson's gormandizing, read 
Macaulay's Essay on Johnson. 

117 3. Dagon : the national god of the Philistines, half man and half 
fish. The word is derived from the Hebrew dag, a fish. See Judges 
xvi. 23, and i Samuel v. 

117 6. the Chartreuse : the leading Carthusian monastery near 
Grenoble. 



NOTES 355 

118 5. Lucian: a Greek satirist and humorist, called the Blas- 
phemer" on account of his attacks on the religious beliefs of his 
time. 

118 14-15. that equivocal wag, C. V. L. : Charles Valentine Le Grice. 
See note on p. 331. 

118 26. some one recalled a legend. The story is told by Leigh Hunt 
in his account of the Blue-Coat School. See note on p. 329. 

Review Questions. 1. Find examples of Lamb's appeal to the sense of 
taste for literary effects. Cf. Milton's and Keats's similar use. 2. Note 
the fine epigrammatic sentence in the eighth paragraph. 3. Study the 
author's use of the short sentence in the tenth paragraph. 4. Pick out 
the topic sentence in each paragraph and note position. 5. Analyze 
the humor of Coleridge's axiom about apple dumplings, and Le Grice's 
anteprandial witticism. 6. Explain the biblical and other literary allu- 
sions. 7. Explain the following : " those Virgilian fowl," orgasm, wind- 
ifall, epicurism, culinary, tucker, and flamens. 

XVL DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE 

London Magazine, January, 1822 

This paper was written by Lamb a short while after the death of his 
brother John. The bereavement brought home to him a depressing 
sense of his loneliness, for his sole surviving near relative was now his 
sister, whose sad affliction deprived him of her companionship for 
months at a time. In the delicate and pathetic confidence of this essay 
he reveals to us the genuine emotions of a heart deprived of the happi- 
ness of wedded life. As a protection from the curious, he, as is his 
custom, blends fact with fiction. 

119 6. who lived in a great house in Norfolk. This house was not 
really situated in Norfolk, but in Hertfordshire, as is afterwards stated 
correctly in the essay on Bl-akesmoor (Blakesware). 

119 10-11. the Children in the Wood. The ballad is given in Bishop 
Percy's Reliques, and in Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads. 
It is the story of the little son and daughter of a Norfolk gentleman, 
who were left with a considerable fortune in the care of an uncle. He, 
in order to secure the property, hired two ruffians to murder the children. 
But one of them relented and killed his companion. The little ones 
were, however, left in the Wayland Wood, where they perished at night 
of cold and terror. In tirne the ruffian confessed, and the unnatural 



356 NOTES 

uncle died in prison. The tale is the subject of Thomas Taylor's play 
The Babes in the Wood. 

119 26-27. which afterwards came to decay. Cussans says in his 
History of Hertfordshire that the Blakesware house was pulled down 
in 1822. The "other house" was Gilston, the principal seat of the 
Plumers, some miles distant. 

120 7. Psaltery : the version of the Psalms in the Book of Common 
Prayer. 

120 28-29. busts of the twelve Caesars. " I could tell you," wrote Lamb 
to Southey, " of an old house with a tapestry bed-room, the ' Judgment 
of Solomon ' composing one panel, and ' Actaeon spying Diana naked ' 
the other. I could tell of an old marble hall, with Hogarth's prints, 
and the Roman Caesars in marble hung around " (Lamb's Letters, XLV). 

121 24-25. their uncle, John L : John Lamb, the author's brother. 

12225. the fair Alice W n. See note, p. 336. 

Review Questions. 1. Note the beautiful simplicity and tenderness of 
the style, which is admirably adapted to the tone of the essay. 2. How 
are the characters of the children suggested .-* 3. Note how deli- 
cately the character of the mother is depicted by reflection in that of 
the imaginary Alice. 4. Is the characterization of Mrs. Field distinct ? 
5. Compare what is here said of John with that in the former essay, 
noticing differences in tone. 6. Note the classic notion of incarnation 
at the close of the essay. 7. What gives unity to the two long sen- 
tences beginning, " Then I told how good," etc., and " Then in some- 
what a more heightened tone," etc. ? 8. Observe the undemote of 
pathos running throughout the essay. 9. Do you find any humor ? 



XVII. ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 
London Magazine, February, 1822 

This was one of three essays originally published in the London under 
the general title of The Old Actors. In the volume of 1823 they were 
abridged and arranged under the title of On Some of the Old Actors, 
On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century, and O71 the Acting of 
Munden. 

123 25. Mr. Barrymore: Spranger Barry (1719-1777), an Irish actor, 
the rival of Garrick. He excelled in tragedy. 

123 28. Mrs. Jordan: the stage name of Dorothy Bland (1762-1816), 
an Irish actress, whom Genest declares never to have had a superior 



NOTES 357 

in comedy. She was especially admired in the role of Hypolita in 
Wycherly's Gentleman Dancing-Maste?'. 

124 2-3. her Nells and Hoydens. Nell is the meek and obedient wife 
of Jobson in C. Coffey's play The Devil to Pay (1731); Hoyden is a 
romping, country girl in Vanbrugh's play The Relapse (1697), modern- 
ized by Sheridan in A Trip to Scarborough (1777). 

124 7. story of her love for Orsino. See Twelfth Night, II, iv, no. 

124 19. ** Write loyal cantons of contemned love," etc. : Twelfth Night, 
I, V, 291. 

125 8. Bensley, Robert (1738-1817). He retired from the stage in 
1796. 

125 13-14. Hotspur's famous rant about glory. See i Henry IV, I, iii, 
200 seq. 

125 (footnote). Venice Preserved : a tragedy by Thomas Otway (165 1- 
J685), "the principal tragic poet of the English classical school." He 
fell in love with Mrs. Barry, who acted in his plays, and who proved his 
evil genius. He died in a baker's shop near a sponging house in which 
he was living in abject poverty. Pierre is a conspirator in Venice Pre- 
served. See II, iii, p. 318, Mermaid ed. 

12624-25. John Kemble. See note on p. 346. 

126 31. Lambert, John (1619-1683) : an English general distinguished 
on the Parliamentary side in the Civil War, and a member of Cromwell's 
Council of State. 

126 31-32. Lady Fairfax : the wife of the fifth Lord Fairfax, a Parlia- 
mentary general in the Civil War. 

12823. Duchess of, Malfy [Malfi] : a tragedy by John Webster 
(printed in 1623). See Mermaid ed. 

129 33. the hero of La Mancha : Don Quixote de la Mancha, a Span- 
ish country gentleman in Cervantes' romance of that name. 

130 15. to mate Hyperion : the son of Caelum and Tellus, the ancient 
god of the sun, overthrown by Apollo. Keats wrote a fragmentary epic 
on the theme. 

130 22. " thus the whirligig of time," etc. : Twelfth Night, V, i, 385. 

130 26. Dodd, James William (1740 ?-i 796) : an actor in Garrick's 
company who was very successful in the parts of Sir Andrew Ague- 
cheek and Abel Drugger. He died in the autumn of 1796 soon after 
retiring from his profession. 

132 3-6. so formally flat in Foppington, etc. Lord Foppington is an 
empty-headed coxcomb, intent only on dress and fashion, in Van Brugh's 
comedy The Relapse (1697), and in Sheridan's adaptation. Tattle, a 
character in Congreve's Love for Love (1695), " a mixture of lying. 



358 NOTES 

foppery, vanity, cowardice, bragging, licentiousness, and ugliness, but a 
professed beau"; Backbite, Sir Benjamin, a conceited, censorious char- 
acter in Sheridan's comedy The School for Scandal (1777) ; Acres, Bob, 
a country gentleman in Sheridan's comedy The Rivals (1775), who tries 
to ape a man of fashion, and, though a coward, is a great blusterer; 
Fribble, a contemptible mollycoddle in Garrick's Miss in Her Teens 

(1753)- 

132 31. " put on the weeds of Dominic." The uniform of the Domin- 
ican friars was a white robe with a black cloak and pointed cap. 

133.3-4. Richard Suett: died 1805. 

133 14. like Sir John, "with hallooing and singing of anthems " : said 
of Sir John Falstaff in 2 Henry IV, I, ii, 213. 

13317. "commerce with the skies": a paraphrase of Milton's // 
Penseroso, 1. 39, " and looks commercing with the skies." 

134 3. Parsons: died 1795. 

134 7. Robin Good-Fellow : the son of King Oberon, but also the 
generic name for any domestic spirit, elve, imp, or fay with the power 
to turn himself into any shape so long as he did harm to none but 
knaves and queans. See Burton's Anato?ny of Mela?icholy, p. 47, and 
The Mad Praiiks and Merry fests of Robin Goodfellow (1580), repub- 
lished by the Percy Society, 1841. 

134 9. Puck, or Hobgoblin, same as Robin Goodfellow : a gossamer- 
winged, dainty-limbed, fawn-faced, mischievous little urchin in Mid- 
sicnimer Nighfs Dream. See also Drayton's Nyniphidia (1627). 

13416. The "force of nature could no farther go": from Dryden's 
poem on Milton, " Three poets in three distant ages born," etc. 

135 1. Jack Bannister (1760-1836) : a noted English comedian, the 
son of Charles Bannister, an actor and bass singer. The Children in 
the Wood is a comedy by Morton (1815). 

135 9. He put us into Vesta's days. In the most primitive times 
Vesta was, according to some mythologists, the mother of the gods. 

135 23. In sock or buskin : in comedy or tragedy. The terms are 
derived from the costumes of comic and tragic actors in classical 
times. 

135 24. Palmer, John (i 747-1 798) : retired from the stage in 1798. 
He excelled in the role of Joseph Surface. 

135 31. Bobby in the Duke's Servant: a character in Townley's farce, 
High Life Below Stairs (1759). 

135 33. Captain Absolute : a character in Sheridan's The Rivals 
(1775), in love with Lydia Languish, to whom he is known only as 
Ensign Beverley. 



NOTES 359 

I 

136 3. Dick Amlet : a gamester in Vanbrugh's comedy, The Con- 
federacy (1695). 

136 8-9. The lies of young Wilding. Jack Wilding is a yomig gentle- 
man from Oxford in S. Foote's farce, The Liar (1761), who fabricates 
the most ridiculous falsehoods, which he passes off for facts. 

136 9. Joseph Surface : a character in Sheridan's School for Scandal 
(1777), whose good is all on the surface, but who is in reality an artful, 
malicious, and sentimental knave. 

136 20. Ben Legend : in Congreve's Love for Love (1695) ! younger son 
of Sir Sampson Legend, a sailor and sea wit, with none of the tradi- 
tional generosity and frankness of the British tar. Dibdin says that 
Thomas Doggett was the best actor of the part. 

137 13-14. a Wapping sailor. Wapping is a quarter of London lying 
along the north bank of the Thames below the Tower. 

Review Questions. 1. The student should read Twelfth Night in 
order to understand this essay properly. 2. Examine with special 
care what Lamb says about Malvolio. It is a noble specimen of 
Shakespearean criticism. 3. Analyze also the characters and acting of 
Dodd, Suett, and Palmer, with reference to the parts taken. 4. Note 
how skillfully Lamb merges the personality of the actor in the character 
taken by him. 5. Give the main points made by Lamb in his criticism 
of the artificial comedy of the eighteenth century. 6. Read the criti- 
cisms on Congreve and Sheridan in any good history of English 
literature, and corhpare their comedy with Shakespeare's. 



XVIIL THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 

London Magazine, May, 1822 

A May-Day Effusion was originally attached as a subtitle to this 
paper. The essay shows with what a keenly observant eye Lamb 
walked the streets of London. Procter speaks of him as " looking no 
one in the face for more than a moment, yet contriving to see every- 
thing as he went on." 

The custom of employing boys to sweep chimneys was not abol- 
ished until 1840, after a long agitation by Parliament (see McCarthy's 
History of England in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. I, pp. 267-273). 
The adult master sweepers hired little boys to do the climbing. The 
system led to much abuse and even criminal cruelty. The limbs of 
the sweepers were severely abraised by the friction necessary to force 



360 NOTES 

their way up the rough masonry. Sometimes the boys would stick 
fast in the narrow openings and would have to be dragged back 
bruised and otherwise injured; often they were burned by having to 
ascend chimneys which had not sufficiently cooled. In several instances 
master sweeps were convicted of abducting boys and employing little 
girls for this work. 

138 1. the peep peep of a young sparrow. " The boy had to climb 
from the fireplace to the top of the chimney and to announce the 
accomplishment of his mission by crying out ' Sweep ! ' when his soot- 
covered head and face emerged from the chimney-top " (McCarthy's 
Nineteejith Century, Vol. I, p. 269). This precaution was taken to pre- 
vent incomplete work. 1 

138 94-25. the old stage direction in Macbeth. See IV, i. 

139 8. the only Salopian house: Mr. Read's shop. "Saloop" was 
an aromatic drink, prepared from sassafras bark and other ingredients, 
at one time much used in London. 

141 12. Hogarth. See note to essay On the Genius and Character of 
Hogarth. 

14130-31. " A sable cloud turns forth, " etc. : Comus^X.^zy Note the 
halo cast over the subject by poetic association in which enjoyment of 
the wit is mingled with admiration of its beauty. 

142 14. Arundel Castle : a noble mansion on the Strand in London, 
in the gardens of which were originally placed the famous Arundelian 
marbles. 

142 20. Venus lulled Ascanius. See Virgil's ^?«<?i^, 1, 643-722. When 
the goddess plotted to make Dido fall in love with ^Eneas, Cupid went 
to Dido in the guise of Ascanius, while the latter remained with 
Venus. 

143 18. Jem White : James White, a schoolmate of Lamb's at Christ's 
Hospital, and for years afterv^^ards " the companion of his lighter moods." 
In 1795 hs published the supposititious Original Letters of Sir John 
Falstaff, 2l book full of quaint old-fashioned humor that pleased Lamb 
greatly. He died in 1820. 

143 24. the fair of St. Bartholomew. This great national fair with its 
variety of shows was held at Smithfield, London, from 11 33 till 1840, 
and became an occasion of popular amusement and unbridled license. 
See Ben Jonson's comedy, Bartholomew Fair (1614), and Morley's 
Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair (1857). 

144 10. our trusty companion Bigod. See note on p. -^^T^y 

14413. Rochester in his maddest days: John Wilmot, Earl of 
Rochester (1647-1680), a poet of the court of Charles II. He erected 



NOTES 361 

a stage on Tower Hill and played the mountebank, was in a state of 
inebriety for five years, and the hero of numerous disguises and 
intrigues. 

144 17. old dame Ursula : also the name of the pig woman in Jonson's 
play. 

145 2. the "Cloth" : the clergy, who formerly wore a distinguishing 
costume of gray or black by which they might be recognized. 

145 14-15. " Golden lads and lasses must," etc. See Cymbeline, IV, ii. 

Review Questions. 1. What literary use does Lamb make of the 
sense of taste ? 2. Examine the use of color, light, and shade. Ainger 
calls this " a study in black." Defend statement. Cf. with color scheme 
in St. Valentine's Day. 3. Where does Lamb give dignity to homely 
subjects : {a) by use of learned words ; [b) by poetic association (cf. Mil- 
ton) ; {c) by classical and biblical allusions ? 4. How does he produce 
his humorous effects ? Find examples of pun, parody, and contrast. 
5. What poem on a preexistent state was written by a friend of 
Lamb's ? 6. Explain the figure in " May the Brush supersede the 
Laurel." 7. Explain the following : y^z/;ri?j- Averni, \dhe<lh.ee\s,yc\Q^t, 
oleaginous, fuliginous, welkin, Cheapside, Hogarth, Rachel (Matthew 
ii. 18), incunabula, quoited, younkers, unctuous. 



XIX. A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 

London Magazine, September, 1822 

In a letter to Bernard Barton of March 11, 1823, Lamb acknowledges 
his indebtedness for the idea of this essay to his friend, Thomas Man- 
ning, mathematical tutor in Cambridge. Mr. Charles Kent and Mr. 
Carew Hazlitt think that the author owed the suggestion to an Italian 
poem by Tigrinio Bistonio entitled Gli Elogi del Porco (Modena, 1761), 
" The Praises of the Pig." Bistonio was the pseudonym of the abbot 
Giuseppe Ferrari. Mr. Richard Garnett and Canon Ainger, however, 
dispute this opinion, and find the original tale in a treatise called De 
Abstinentia by Porphyry of Tyre in the third century. Manning may 
have seen the legend in some Chinese form during his travels in China 
or Thibet. On the other hand, it is more probable that he may have 
learned it from Thomas Taylor, the Platonist, who brought out a 
translation of Porphyry in 1823. 

145 22. a Chinese manuscript: probably a fantastic creation of 
Lamb's imagination. 



362 NOTES 

145 2-2. my friend M. : Thomas Manning. Lamb was introduced to him 
by Lloyd in 1799, and a lifelong friendship resulted. For several years 
an interesting correspondence passed between them, of which Talfourd 
says, " In his letters to Manning a vein of wild humour breaks out, of 
which there are but slight indications in the correspondence with his 
more sentimental friends ; as if the very opposition of Manning's more 
scientific powers to his own force of sympathy provoked the sallies 
which the genial kindness of the mathematician fostered." 

145 26-27. their great Confucius : the celebrated Chinese philosopher, 
traveler, and teacher (550-478 B.C.). 

150.30-31. "Ere sin could blight," etc. : from Coleridge's Epitaph ofi 
an Infant, a poem in the joint volume of 1796. 

152 9-10. school . . . over London Bridge : " an audacious indifference 
to fact." Lamb's school was not across the river. 

153 10. St. Omer's : a Catholic college for British youth in the city of 
that name in France. Lamb, of course, never attended it. 

Review Questions. 1. Note the humor of the title. Why better 
than one like " Tradition of the Origin of Cooking" ? 2. Is the effect 
of the quotation " Ere sin could blight," etc., burlesque or mock 
heroic? Cf. treatment with Battle of the Books and Rape of the Lock. 
3. Compare humor with that in essays already studied. Is it broader 
— more delicate ? Why ? 4. Is there a vein of satire in the essay ? 
5. How does it rank as a short story ? 6. Examine point of view and 
sentence structure, and note effects. 7. Where is there a play on 
words ? 8. Note meaning and use of the words : mast, younkers, booby, 
crackling, me (in second paragraph), /r<«/2/(2?'z'«/;?, sapors, batten, villatic, 
brawn (boar's flesh), intenerating, and dulcifying. 

XX. ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN 

London Magazine, October, 1822 

153 (title). Munden, Joseph Shepherd (1758-1832) : an English actor 
whose admiration for Garrick determined him to go on the stage. His 
first appearance in London was with a company of strolling pla^^ers in 
1790. He created the parts of Sir Robert Bramble, Ephraim Smooth, 
Caustic, Old Rapid, etc., and acted them with great applause. His 
greatest triumph was in the role of Old Dornton in The Road to Ruin. 
He retired from the stage on May 31, 1824. 

153 27. Cockletop : a character in O'Keefe's (1747-1833) comedy 
Modern Antiques ; or, The Merry Mourners, 



NOTES 363 

154 3-4. ** There the antic sate," etc. See Richard II, III, ii. 

154 15-16. like the faces which . . . come, etc, Cf. De Quincey's 
Confessions, Wauchope's edition, pp. 137-140. 

154 22. Hogarth. See note to the essay On the Genius and Character 
of Hogarth. 

154 26. Farley, Charles (1771-1859): a London actor and theatrical 
machinist, author of The Magic Oak, Aggression, etc. He played with 
much success the parts of Jeremy in Love for Love, Grindoff in The 
Miller and His Men, and Lord Trinket in The Jealous Wife. 

154 27. Listen, John (1776-1846) : a noted London comedian, con- 
nected at various times with the Haymarket, Covent Garden, Olympic, 
and Drury Lane theaters. His most popular role was Paul Pry in John 
Poole's farce by that name. See Doran's English Stage, II, 351. 

154 31. Hydra. See note on p. 353. Byron nicknamed his mother 
" Hydra." 

155 9. Old Dornton : a great banker in Holcroft's comedy The Road 
to Ruin (1792). He adores his son Harry, whom he spoils by alternate 
indulgence and sternness. 

155 19. " sessa " : an exclamation urging to speed. See King Lear, 
III, iv, 104; vi, 76. 

155 27. Cassiopeia's chair : a beautiful circumpolar constellation con- 
taining thirty stars brighter than the sixth magnitude. It represents the 
wife of Cepheus, an Ethiopian king, seated in a chair with both arms 
raised. 

155 30. Fuseli, John Henry (1741-1825) : a Swiss-English painter and 
art critic. 

XXI. MUNDEN'S FAREWELL 

London Magazine, July, 1824 

Talfourd mentions a pleasing incident of the evening. On account 
of the dense crowd at the performance, Lamb and his sister were pro- 
vided by Munden with seats in a corner of the orchestra close to the 
stage. During the play he saw Munden hand Lamb a huge tankard, 
which Elia quaffed to the dregs with a relish while his old friend looked 
on with evident gusto. Half a century later this same occurrence was 
related to Mr. Kent by Miss Kelly, who observed it from an upper 
box. It was also upon this occasion that Mary Lamb convulsed her 
almost tearful brother with the pun, " Sic transit gloria Munden ! " 

156 15. Sir Peter Teazle : an old gentleman in Sheridan's School for 
Scandal (1777). He marries a country girl who proves vain, selfish, 



364 NOTES 

and extravagant. He loves her but continually nags her for her infe- 
rior birth and rustic ways. See Watkins's Life of Sheridan. 

156 16. Sir Robert Bramble : a character in Colman's The Poor 
Gentleman (1802). He is testy but generous, fond of argument but 
impatient of flattery. 

156 18. Jemmy Jumps : a character in Shield's opera The Farmer 
(1788). 

157 34. Humphrey Dobbin : a blunt old retainer and confidential 
servant of Sir Robert Bramble, under whose rough exterior beats a 
heart full of kindness. 

Review Questions. 1. Analyze the humor in the description of 
Munden's facial expression. 2. On what ground is his work as an actor 
compared with Hogarth the artist's ? 3. Observe the author's enthusiasm 
in Munden''s Farewell. Lamb here shows plainly the joy of the artist in his 
work. 4. Describe Munden's dress and acting in the part of Old Dozey. 
5. What do you learn of Lamb's favorite plays in the last two essays ? 

XXn. DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND 

READING 

London Magazine, July, 1822 

160 (quotation). The Relapse : a comedy by Sir John Vanbrugh 
{1666-1726). See note on p. 357. 

160 10. Shaftesbury, third earl of, Anthony Ashley Cooper (1671- 
17 1 3) : author of Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions and Times 
(1711). 

160 11. Jonathan Wild : a police spy, the hero of a novel by Henry 
Fielding (1707-17 54), the author of Tom- fones. Wild was a real 
character, but his adventures are partly fictitious. He is depicted as a 
coward, hypocrite, and bully, entirely devoid of human feeling. The 
purpose of the book, which is an ironical panegyric, is to expose the 
motives of the unprincipled great. 

160 14. biblia a-biblia : (Greek) books that are not books, i.e. which 
do not deserve the title of books. 

160 15-16. the Literary excepted : because Lamb was a contributor to 
the Literary Pocket-book. See Leigh Hunt's essay on Pocket-books and 
Keepsakes, Camelot ed. 

160 18. Hume, David (171 1-1776), author of the History of England ; 
Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794), author of the Decline and Fall of the 
Roman Empire ; Robertson, William (1721-1793), a Scotch historian, 



NOTES 365 

author of the History of Scotland and History of the Reign of Charles V; 
Beattie, James (1735-1803), a Scotch poet, essayist, and philosopher, 
author of The Minstrel, Essay on Truth, etc.; Soame Jenyns (1704- 1787), 
a miscellaneous London writer whose style was regarded in Lamb's day 
as a model of elegance. Among his works are The Art of Dancing, 
The Nature and Origin of Evil, Internal Evidences of the Christian 
Religion, and Objections to the Taxation of Our American Colonies. 

160 20. Flavius Josephus (d. about 100 a.d.) : author of the Antiqui- 
ties of the fews and Wars of the fews. 

161 1. Paley, William (1743-1805) : an English theologian and 
philosopher. 

161 9-10. a withering Population Essay : probably the Essay on the 
Principle of Population by Thomas Malthus (i 766-1834).' 

161 10-11. Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729), author of several come- 
dies and founder of the Tatler and the Guardian (see note on p. 332); 
Farquhar, George (1678-1707), author of Love in a Bottle, The Recruit- 
ing Officer, The Beaux' Stratagem, and other popular plays ; Adam Smith 
(i 723-1 790), author of The Wealth of Nations and founder of the science 
of political economy. 

161 15. Paracelsus, Philippus Aureolus (1493-1541): a Swiss quack 
physician and alchemist, author of a visionary system of philosophy. 
He opposed the theory and practice of medicine in vogue in his time. 
See Browning's poem Paracelsus. 

161 15-16. Raymund LuUy (1235-1315): a Spanish alchemist, who 
went as a missionary to the Mussulmans of Asia and Africa. He was 
the author of Ars Magna., A System of Logic, and many other works. 

161 34. Vicar of Wakefield (1766) : by Oliver Goldsmith (i 728-1 774). 
Dr. Primrose, the vicar, is the type of the poor, simple-minded, but 
pious clergyman with a large family in the rural districts of England. 

162 5-6. some Lethean cup. The water of Lethe caused the lost 
souls to forget their sufferings. 

162 10. Fielding, see note on p. 364 ; Smollett, see note on pp. 345, 
346 ; Sterne, see note on p. 342. 

16216-17, "We know not where," etc: imperfectly quoted from 
Othello, V, ii, 12. 

162 18. Life of the Duke of Newcastle. See note on pp. 334-335. 

162 23-94. Sir Philip Sydney [Sidney] (i 554-1 586), the accomplished 
Elizabethan courtier, scholar, and soldier, author of Arcadia, Apologie 
for Poesie, etc. ; Bishop Taylor (161 3-1667), the eloquent pulpit orator 
and author of Holy Living and Holy Dying, etc. ; Fuller, Thomas 
(1608-1661), see note on p. 346. 



366 NOTES 

•t 

162 31. Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718), and Tonson, Jacob (1656?- 
1736): brought out an edition of Shakespeare's plays in 1709. Rowe 
was poet laureate and author oi Jane Shore, Ulysses, The Fair Penitent^ 
and other tragedies. Tonson was a well-known London bookseller, 
and pubhshed Rowe's, Pope's, and Theobald's editions of Shakespeare. 

163 6. Beaumont, Francis (1584-1616), and Fletcher, John (1579- 
1625). They wrote in collaboration thirteen dramas, the best known of 
which are Fhilaster, The Maid's Tragedy, A King and No King, and 
The Knight of the Burning Pestle. 

163 10-11. the Anatomy of Melancholy. See note on p. 334. 

163 15. The wretched Malone : Edmund Malone (1741-1812), an Irish 
critic and Shakespearean editor. The incident occurred in 1793 while 
he was visiting Stratford for the purpose of examining the municipal 
records. His large library is now at Oxford University. 

163 33-34. Kit Marlowe: Christopher Marlowe (i 564-1 593), author 
of Doctor Faustus, Edzvard II, The Jew of Malta, and other tragedies 
in his "high astounding" blank verse; Drayton, Michael (1563-1631), 
author of Polyolbion, a poetical description of England and Wales ; 
Drummond, William (i 585-1649), of Hawthornden, author of sonnets 
and other short poems; Cowley, Abraham (1618-1667), a royalist poet, 
w^ho enjoyed a great reputation during his lifetime, but who is remem- 
bered now only for the excellent style of his essays. 

164 3. the Faerie Queene. See note on p. 354. 

164 4. Bishop Andrewes: Launcelot Andrews (i 555-1626), a famous 
theological writer who became bishop of Winchester. 

164 32. Nando's : a London coffeehouse. 

165 1. diurnals : journals. Both words are derivatives from the 
Latin diurnalis, daily, the latter coming through the French. 

165 10-11. "The Royal Lover and Lady G ," "The Melting Pla- 
tonic and the Old Beau": two cartoons on the dissolute Prince Regent, 
afterwards George IV (1762-1830). 

165 14. Poor Tobin: John Tobin (1770-1804), a dramatic writer 
whose Life was published in 1820. 

16515-16. Paradise Lost (1667): Milton's great epic; Comus : a 
masque by Milton, acted at Ludlow Castle (1634). 

165 20. Candide : the title of a novel by Voltaire (1694-17 78) designed 
to undermine Christianity by subtle ridicule. The hero Candide bears 
his many accumulated misfortunes with cynical indifference. 

Voltaire says " No." He tells you that Candide 
Found life more tolerable after meals. 

Byron, Don Juan, V, 31. 



NOTES 367 

165 23. Primrose Hill : an eminence northwest of London. 
165 23. her Cythera : Cythera was one of the Ionic islands and was 
sacred to Venus. 

165 24. Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (i 741) : the first modem novel, 
by Richardson, written in the form of letters. Pamela Andrews, a 
simple modest country girl in the service of a rich but profligate young 
squire, resists all his advances with prudence and meekness, and at 
length marries and reforms him. 

166 1. Snow Hill : the old street from Newgate to Holborn Bridge, 
superseded by Skinner Street in 1802. 

166 3. Lardner, Nathaniel (1684-1768) : a Unitarian theologian. 

166 6. a porter's knot : a pad worn on the head by porters to 
support burdens. 

166 8. the five points of Calvinistic theology: (i) predestination; 
(2) irresistible grace; (3) original sin; (4) particular redemption; and 
(5) the final perseverance of the saints. 

166 12. Master Betty: William Henry West (1790-1874), an actor 
who made his debut in London at the age of twelve, and in fifty-six 
nights realized ^34,000. He was called the " Young Roscius," from 
the greatest of Roman actors. 

166 15-16. Johnson and Steevens's Shakespeare. Dr. Johnson's edi- 
tion was published in 1765 and was united with Steevens's a few years 
later. 

166 29. Saint Anthony (251 P-356.'') : an Egyptian abbot, called by 
some the founder of asceticism. He retired from the society of men 
and lived in a mountain cave where he was tempted by the devil in 
a variety of forms. The legend has been frequently depicted in art. 

166 34-167 1. a slight piece of mine : Lamb's farce, Mr. H- , 

which, though finely cast and staged, failed from want of interest in 
the plot. 

167 10-11. " snatch a fearful joy " : from Gray's Ode on Eton College. 
167 11. Martin B : Martin Charles Burney (d. 1852), a London 

attorney, son of Admiral Burney. He was a lifelong friend of Lamb, 
who wrote of him, " I have not found a whiter soul than thine." 

167 12. Clarissa Harlowe (1748) : Richardson's greatest novel, written 
in the form of letters. To avoid a marriage of her parents' making, 
Clarissa elopes to London under the protection of her lover, Richard 
Lovelace, who abuses her confidence and brings her to a death of grief 
and shame. 

16719-168 5. **I saw a boy with eager eye," etc.: "one of Mary 
Lamb's pieces in the lost Poetry for Children'''' (Shepherd). 



368 NOTES 

Review Questions. 1. Justify the title of the essay by an examina- 
tion of its structure. 2. What do we learn of Lamb's literary likes and 
dislikes ? 3. What do you know of the writings of Hume, Gibbon, 
Robertson, Steele, Farquhar, Smollett, Sterne, Thomson, Sidney, 
Taylor, Milton, Fuller, Burton, Marlowe, and others mentioned ? 
4. What gifts did Lamb possess as a critic ? what limitations ? Was his 
taste for literature normal ? 5. Note the positive statement of the 
author on matters of opinion. 6. Explain the meaning and use of 
the following : Catholic, mantua-maker, Lethean, eterne, Edenizened, 
varlet, J>ro bono publico, diurnals, tete-h-tete, casuist, swain, dilemma, 
pursy, cit, satyrs, hobgoblin, and mopping. 



XXIII. OLD CHINA 

London Magazine, March, 1823 

" This beautiful essay tells its own story — this time, we may be sure, 
without romance or exaggeration of any kind. It is a contribution of 
singular interest to our understanding of the happier days of Charles 
and Mary's united life " (Ainger). 

168 18. perspective: a device in art by which objects are so drawn 
on a flat surface as to appear at their proper distances. 

168 26. Mandarin : the title of the governor of a province in China. 

168 31-1691. angle of incidence: the angle formed by one object 
meeting another. A line drawn in the direction of the lady's foot would 
terminate a furlong off ! 

169 5. dancing the hays : an old English country dance with intri- 
cate figures, frequently mentioned by writers of the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries. 

On holy-days, when Virgins meet 
To dance the heyes with nimble feet. 

Herrick, To Phillis, 29, 30. 

169 6. couchant : an heraldic term meaning that the animal is lying 
down with its head raised. 

169 7. Cathay : the name given by Marco Polo to a region supposed 
to be Chinese Tartary. Cf. Bryon's " the ship from far Cathay," and 
Tennyson's " a cycle of Cathay." 

169 8-9. over our Hyson. Hyson is a fragrant kind of green tea, so 
called from the Chinese word for springtime, the season when it is 
gathered. 



NOTES 369 

169 10. speciosa miracula: beautiful wonders. Horace's expression 
referring to the stories of the Iliad. 
169 17. Bridget : Mary Lamb. 

169 33-34. that folio Beaumont and Fletcher. See note on p. 366. 

170 5. Islington : a parish two miles north of St. Paul's. Lamb was 
not living there at this time, but rented a cottage there in August, 1823. 

170 18. your old corbeau : your old coat. Corbeau is French for 
raven. 

17026. Leonardo. See note on p. 345. 

170 31-32. wilderness of Leonardos. Cf. Shylock's " wilderness of 
monkeys." 

170 33. Enfield : a town in Middlesex ten miles north of London. 

171 9. Izaak Walton (i 593-1683) : author of the Complete Angler, a 
book universally admired for its descriptions of country scenery and its 
cheerful philosophy. The Lea is a tributary of the Thames. Trout 
Hall is an inn where Piscator and Viator, two of the characters of 
the book, meet. 

171 23. the Battle of Hexham, and the Surrender of Calais : comedies 
by George Colman (i 762-1836). 

171 24. Bannister, John (1760-1836), a noted comedian ; Mrs. Bland, 
a popular actress at the opening of the nineteenth century. 

171 24. the Children in the Wood : a comedy by Thomas Morton 
(1815). 

171 .32. Rosalind in Arden. See .<4j- You Like It. 

171 32-33. Viola at the Court of niyria. See Twelfth Night. 

17314-15. cheerful Mr. Cotton: Charles Cotton (1630-1687), an Eng- 
lish burlesque poet, who added a second part on Fly-fishing to the 
fifth edition of the Complete Angler. The phrase " lusty brimmers " is 
from his lines on the New Year. 

174i 20. Croesus : the last king of Lydia, whose name is synonymous 
with enormous wealth. 

174 20. the great Jew R : Rothschild. 

174 23. bed-tester : a canopy over a bed. 

Review Questions. 1. Is the title of this essay an adequate one for 
a paper on the compensations in being poor ? 2. Does the essay show 
unity in its structure ? 3. Explain the references to Rosalind and 
Viola. 4. What do you know of Beaumont and Fletcher and Izaak 
Walton ? 5. Note Lamb's use of italics. 6. What can one learn from 
this essay of the author's range of interests, scholarship, tastes, etc. ? 



370 NOTES 



XXIV. POOR RELATIONS 

London Magazine, May, 1823 

175 2-3. a blot on your 'scutcheon : a term in heraldry signifying 
illegitimacy. 

175 3-4. a death's-head at your banquet. Herodotus says, " The 
Egyptians have a man to carry around an image of a corpse at their 
entertainments, saying, ' Look at this, and drink and be merry ; for such 
you shall be, when you die ' " {History, II, 78). 

175 4. Agathocles' pot : Agathocles (361-289 e.g.), the son of a 
Sicilian potter, who was exposed in infancy and brought up to the same 
trade. He raised himself from the ranks to become tyrant of Sicily. 

175 30. a tide-waiter : one who is waiting for a lucky tide. Cf. 
Shakespeare's " There is a tide in the affairs of men," etc. 

177 19. Richard Amlet, Esq. : a gamester in Vanbrugh's comedy The 
Confederacy (1705). His mother is a rich, vulgar tradeswoman, who 
settles ^10,000 on her "sad scapegrace." 

177 30-31. Poor W : Favell. See note on p. 331. 

178 16. with Nessian venom. The centaur Nessus was killed by Her- 
cules for offering violence to Deianira. She steeped her husband's 
shirt in the blood of the centaur, in order, as she w^as led to believe, to 
secure her husband's love. Hercules, however, was poisoned by the 
shirt and died in agony. 

178 17. Latimer, Hugh (1485 ?-i555) : a graduate of Cambridge, 
burned at Oxford. 

17818. Hooker, Richard (i 553-1600): a graduate of Oxford. 

179 23. the Artist Evangelist. St. Luke was the patron saint of 
painters and physicians. 

179 27-28. like Satan, "knew his mounted sign — and fled." See 
Paradise Lost, IV, 1013-1014 ; a punning paraphrase of "The fiend 
looked up, and knew His mounted scale aloft." 

180 18. the Mint: the Royal Mint, erected in 181 1 on the site of 
an old Cistercian abbey on Tower Hill. 

181 2. these young Grotiuses. The reference is to the principal work 
of Hugo Grotius, De Jure Belli et Pacis (1625), in which the author, a 
Dutch jurist, founded the science of international law. 

Review Questions. 1. Study in this essay Lamb's marvelous command 
of words. The opening paragraph shows his illustrative equipment as 
well as his resourceful vocabulary. 2. Explain the references to 



NOTES 371 

Mordecai and Lazarus. 3. What is meant by " an old humourist " ? 
Cf. Jonson's Every Man in his Humour. 4. Why does Lamb use the 
verb form in -eth ? 5. Note shift of tone from humorous to serious, 
also the use of both expository and narrative styles. 6. Compare the 
four studies in character, types of the poor relation. 7. An imitative 
essay might be written on Rich Relatiotis. 

XXV. THE OLD MARGATE HOY 

' Loftdon Magazine, July, 1823 

182 (title). Margate : a seaport and watering place on the Isle of 
Thanet in Kent; hoy: a one-masted, cutter-rigged, and single-decked 
vessel. Ben Jonson in The Alchemist speaks of " six great slops bigger 
than three Dutch hoys." 

182 10. the Universities : Oxford and Cambridge. 

182 12. Henley : a town in Oxfordshire, situated on the Thames 
thirty-six miles west of London, and famous for its boat races. 

182 16-18. Worthing, Brighton, Eastbourne, Hastings : popular sea- 
side resorts in Sussex, situated on the English Channel. 

183 4. a great sea-chimera : a fire-breathing monster of the sea. See 
note on p. 353. 

183 5. that fire-god parching up Scamander : Hephaestus, mentioned 
in the Iliad, XXI, 342 seq. 

183 18. Eastcheap : originally the eastern market place of London, 
now a small street near the northern end of London Bridge. 

183 20. like another Ariel. The reference is to Shakespeare's Tempest, 
I, ii, 198. 

185 10. phoenix : a fabulous bird of Egypt which lived five hundred 
years, and when about to die made a nest in Arabia and burned itself 
to ashes, from which a young phcEnix arose. See The Marvellous 
Adventures of Sir John Maundevile, Kt., Chap. V (Grant ed., 1895). 

18518. the Colossus at Rhodes: a colossal statue of Apollo at 
Rhodes, one of the seven wonders of antiquity. Its straddling of the 
harbor was fictitious. It was destroyed by an earthquake soon after it 
was erected. 

185 32. the Reculvers : twin beacon towers of a ruined monastery 
near Heme Bay in Kent. 

187 24. Orellana : the name of the Amazon in early books and maps. 

187 26-27. " For many a day," etc. : from Thomson's Seasons, 
" Summer," 1. 1002. 



372 NOTES 

187 28. " still-vexed Bermoothes " : The Tempest, I, ii, 229. 

187 32-33. "Be but as bugs," etc. : quoted inaccurately from Spen- 
ser's Faerie Queene, II, xii, 25 ; "frighten" should be "fearen," "bugs" 
means "bug-bears, terrors," and " entral" means "depths." 

188 1. Juan Fernandez : the island of Alexander Selkirk, the original 
of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. 

188 16. the poem of Gebir : Landor's Gebir, Book V. Lamb criticized 
the poem punningly as " gibberish," but added, " Gebir hath some 
lucid intervals." 

188 18. Cinque Port : a collective name for the five English Channel 
ports, — Hastings, Romney, Hythe, Dover, and Sandwich. 

188 31. Staffordshire: one of the midland counties of England. 

189 1. Amphitrites. Amphitrite was the wife of Neptune, the god 
of the sea. 

189 7. Meschek [more properly Mesech]. See Psalm cxx. 5. 

189 31. a book "to read strange matter in": quoted from Mac- 
beth, I, V. 

190 14. Twickenham. See note on p. 348. 

190 25. "The daughters of Cheapside," etc.: inaccurately quoted 
from Randolph's Ode to Master Anthony Stafford: 

The beauties of the Cheap, and wives of Lombard Street. 

Review Questions. 1. Study the characterization of the lying trav- 
eler. 2. Note the pathetic contrast in the sketch of the poor diseased 
lad. 3. What is Lamb's explanation of the impression made by the 
first sight of the sea ? 4. What are Lamb's obj ections to fashionable 
seaside resorts ? 5. Where do you find a note of the bohemian, the 
unconventional? 6. Find satiric touches. 7. Observe the effects of 
the quotations. 



XXVI. BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE 

Lojtdon Magazine, September, 1824 

Blakesmoor was Blakesware, in Hertfordshire, an ancient seat of the 
Plumer family, and not Gilston, as given by most of Elia's editors. 
This much-disputed point is settled by the following passage from 
Lamb's letter of August 10, 1827, to Barton : " You have well-described 
your old-fashioned paternal hall. Is it not odd that every one's recol- 
lections are of some such place ? I had my Blakesware (' Blakesmoor ' 
in the London).'"' Before Lamb's visit recorded in the essay, the old 



'NOTES 373 

Blakesware mansion had been demolished and the contents, including 
the Twelve Caesars and the Marble Hall, removed to Gilston. Mary 
Lamb has described this same house in " The Young Mahomedan," a 
story in the volume entitled Mrs. Leicester's School. 

192 14. Cowley, Abraham (i 6 18-1667) : an English domestic poet. 
Lamb probably has in mind Cowley's essay on Myself, in which he 
tells how in his childhood he read Spenser in his mother's parlor. 

192 24. Ovid (43 B,c.-i8 ? a.d.) : the great Roman poet of the Augus- 
tan age, author of the famous Metamorphoses (a collection of mytho- 
logical stories), Heroides, and Amores. 

192 25. Actseon in mid sprout, etc. Actseon beheld Diana bathing, 
and was consequently changed by the goddess into a stag, and was torn 
in pieces by his own dogs. In the picture he would be represented 
with sprouting horns. 

192 27. Dan Phoebus. Apollo flayed the satyr Marsyas alive because 
he ventured to rival the god in music. See note on p. 336. 

194 12. coatless : without a family coat of arms. 

194 13. Mowbray, Thomas (d. 1399), Duke of Norfolk, who on the eve 
of a combat in the lists with the Earl of Hereforth (afterwards Heniy IV) 
in 1398 was banished for ten years by Richard II. He is a character 
in Shakespeare's play of Richard II; De Clifford, Richard Fitz Ponce, 
whose granddaughter Jane Clifford was the mistress of Henry II, was 
the founder of the proud Clifford family. See note on p. 322. 

194 21. capitulatory : containing a summary of their achievements. 

194 28. " Resurgam " : Latin motto meaning " I shall rise again." 

195 5. Damoetas : a shepherd in Virgil's Eclogue III, who engages in 
a trial of skill in music with Menalchas. 

195 8. ^gon : a shepherd mentioned in the above eclogue as the 
rival of Menalchas for the love of Neasra. 

195 16. those old W s. Lamb disguises the Plumer family under 

this initial. Mr. Ward, the author of Tremaine, did not become con- 
nected with the family until his marriage with Mrs. Plumer in 1828. 

195 27-28. so like my Alice : Lamb's early love. See note on p. 336. 

195 33. in the margin. Here followed in the original essay in the 
London some verses by Mary Lamb entitled Helen. 

Review Questions. 1. What sentiments does Lamb feel for the old 
Blakesware manor ? 2. What are his feelings about " pride of ances- 
try " ? 3. Look up the meanings of the heraldic terms, e.g. " embla- 
zoned," " trenchant," " 'scutcheon." 4. Note how much is made of the 
impressions of his childhood. 



374 NOTES 

XXVII. CAPTAIN JACKSON 

London Magazine, November, 1824 

197 (title). Captain Jackson. Some suppose, with much plausibility, 
that Randal Norris of the Inner Temple was the original of this char- 
acter sketch. When writing of living people it was Lamb's custom to 
change incidents freely. 

197 19-20. Althea's horn in a poor platter. Amalthea's horn was the 
cornucopia, or horn of plenty. See Paradise Lost, II, 356. 

197 27. the " mind, the mind, Master Shallow " : from 2 Henry IV, 
III, ii. Shallow is a lying, roguish, weak-minded country justice, and 
is supposed to be a caricature of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote. 

198 13. sate above the salt : i.e. in a place of distinction, because 
nearer the head of the table, the saltcellar being in the middle. 

199 19. Glover, Richard (17 12-1785) : a London merchant, for several 
years member of Parliament, and distinguished for his eloquence, integ- 
rity, and patriotism. He published Leonidas, Boadicea, Medea, The 
Athenaid, and a popular ballad. Admiral Hosier's Ghost. 

201 4-7. "When we came down through Glasgow town," etc. : from a 
beautiful old ballad, of which Lamb was very fond, — 

Waly, waly, up the bank, 
And waly, waly, down the brae. 

201 20. Tibbs, Ned : a poor, clever, dashing young beau in Gold- 
smith's A Citizen of the World (1759). He imagined his garret to be 
the choicest spot in London, and all the people of fashion to be his 
familiar acquaintances. 

201 20. Bobadil : a character in Ben Jonson's Every Man in his 
Humour (1598). He is an ignorant, shallow, cowardly fellow, who 
persuades his dupes that he is an amazing hero. Henry Woodward 
(17 1 7-1 777) played the part with great applause. Bobadil was also 
one of the favorite roles of Dickens when a young actor. 

Review Questions. 1. Observe the finely drawn portrait of Jackson, — 
the type of those who know how " to put a handsome face upon indi- 
gent circumstances." 2. In drawing his character what use is made of 
his suppers ? 3. How is an atmosphere of hospitality and good cheer 
created ? 4. Compare Jackson's character with old Caleb's in Dickens's 
Cricket on the Hearth. Which has the more humor ? pathos .? high 
spirits ? 5. Was the captain a victim of self-deception ? 6. Has 
Lamb succeeded in making the personalities of the daughters distinct t 



NOTES 375 



XXVIII. BARBARA S- 



London Magazine, April, 1825 

201 (title) Barbara S : Fanny Kelly (1790-1882), a well-known 

London actress and a highly esteemed friend of Lamb's. Miss Kelly 
told Mr. Charles Kent that the incident related in this essay occurred 
in 1799 at Drury Lane Theater, where she was then " a miniature chor- 
ister." Some recently discovered letters reveal the interesting fact that 
Lamb made her a proposal of marriage. 

202 18-19. She had already drawn tears in young Arthur. See King 
John, IV, ii. 

202 19-20. had rallied Richard ... in the Duke of York, etc. See 
Richard III, II, iv, and III, ii. 

202 23. the Children in the Wood. See note on p. 355. 

203 23. the part of the Little Son, etc. The play referred to is Isa- 
bella ; or, the Fatal Marriage, a tragedy by Thomas Southern (1694). 
The part was also played by Mrs. Siddons. The child is Biron's son. 

204 4. Liston, John (1776-1846). See note on p. 363. 
204 5. Mrs. Charles Kemble was Miss De Camp, an actress. 

204 6. her accomplished husband: Charles Kemble (1775-1854), a 
noted English actor, brother of Mrs. Sarah Siddons and John Kemble. 

204 7. Macready, William Charles (i 793-1873) : an English trage- 
dian, who attained front rank in his profession. His best parts were 
Macbeth, Lear, Cassius, lago, Virginius, and' Richelieu. The Astor 
Place riot occurred during his visit to America. 

204 12. Dodd, James William. See note on p. 357. 

20413. Baddeley, Robert (1733-1794) : an English actor, the origi- 
nal Moses in The School for Scandal. Doran says that " he was the 
last actor to wear the uniform of scarlet and gold prescribed for the 
gentlemen of His Majesty's household, who were patented actors." 
He endowed an asylum for aged and broken-down actors. 

207 (footnote). The maiden name of this lady was Street: a charac- 
teristic fiction of the author's designed to mislead the reader and to 
impart a tone of reality to the essay. 

Review Questions. 1. What is the difference between this essay and 
a short story? 2. Note the rambling construction and reminiscent 
tone of the essay. 3. What quality of Lamb's style is illustrated in the 
anecdote of the salty fowl? 4. What by that of the returned half 
guinea? 5. Which predominates in this essay — narrative or reflec- 
tion ? In which is Lamb at his best ? 



3/6 NOTES 

XXIX. THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 
London Magazine, May, 1825 

After a severe illness in the winter of 1 824-1825, Lamb asked to be 
retired from his position in the East India House. The germs from 
which grew this finished essay are found in his letters during that 
period. " Oh, that I were kicked out of Leadenhall," he wrote to 
Barton, February 10, "with every mark of indignity and a competence 
in my fob. The birds of the air would not be so free as I should. 
How I would prance and curvet it, and pick up cowslips, and ramble 
about puiposeless as an idiot ! " For over eight weeks he was kept in 
suspense. At last, on March 29, the directors decided to retire him on a 
pension. " Here am I then," he wrote to Wordsworth, April 6, " after 
thirty-three years' slavery sitting in my own room at eleven o'clock this 
finest of all April mornings, a freed man, with ^441 a year for the 
remainder of my life, live I as long as John Dennis, who outlived his 
annuity and starved at ninety. ... I came home FOREVER on 
Tuesday in last week. The incomprehensibleness of my condition 
overwhelmed me. It was like passing from life into eternity." 

207 (title). Superannuated: retired on pension. 

207 (quotation). " Sera tamen respexit libertas " : adapted with 
change of order from Virgil's Eclogue I, 28. 

207 (quotation). O'Keefe, John (i 747-1833) : an Irish dramatist who 
wrote many comic pieces for the Haymarket and Covent Garden 
theaters. 

208 7. Mincing Lane leads off Fenchurch Street, between the Bank 
of England and the Tower of London, 

210 10. L : the fictitious Lacy mentioned afterwards. 

210 28. B : the fictitious Bosanquet mentioned afterwards. 

211 12, 13. the house of Boldero, etc. The directors of the India House 
are mentioned as if they were a private firm of merchants. No men with 
the names given were directors at the time of the author's retirement. 

211 14. "Esto perpetua!" These were the dying words of Father 
Paolo Sarpi (1552-1623), spoken of his native Venice. 

212 11-12. "That's born," etc. This beautiful quotation from 
Thomas Middleton (d. 1627) is given in Lamb's Specimens. 

213 1-2. a Tragedy by Sir Robert Howard : The Vestal Virgin ; or. The 
Roman Ladies. The lines are spoken by the vestal Verginia (V, i). 
Howard (1626-1698) was Dryden's brother-in-law, and joint author of 
The Indiaji Queen. 



\ 



I 



NOTES 377 

213 29-30. Ch : Chambers ; Do : Dodwell ; PI : Plumer. 

213 32. a Gresham : probably Sir Thomas Gresham (1519 ?-i579), a 
wealthy financier, who founded the Royal Exchange in memory of an 
only son. Two other members of this distinguished family became 
Lord Mayors. 

213 32. a Whittington: Richard (or Dick) Whittington (d. 1423), 
a wealthy merchant who became Lord Mayor of London. The story 
of him and his cat is found in popular ballads and nursery tales. 

214 7. Aquinas, St. Thomas. See note on p. 363. 

214 16. Carthusian : an order of monks founded in 1086 by St. 
Bruno, who retired with six companions to the solitude of La 
Chartreuse, Grenoble. In England the name was corrupted into 
Charterhouse. 

214 30. the Elgin marbles : the sculptures by Phidias, originally on 
the Parthenon at Athens, but brought to London by Lord Elgin (1801 
-1803), and purchased in 1 816 by the British government. 

215 3. Wednesday feelings : a reference to Lamb's Wednesday 
evening parties. See the Introduction, pp. xvii-xix. 

215 8-9. Black Monday. Lamb means the beginning of another week 
of toil at the " desk's dead wood." " Black Monday was Easter Monday ; 
so called because, in 1360, when King Edward III was encamped 
before Paris, the day was full dark of mist and hail, and so bitter cold 
that many men died on their horses' backs with the cold" (Stow's 
Chronicles). 

215 14. huge cantle : a large slice or comer. See i Henry IV, III, 
i, 100. 

215 18-19. It is Lucretian pleasure, etc. : an allusion to Lucretius, 
De Rerum Natura, II, i. 

216 11. "As low as to the fiends " : from Hamlet, II, ii, part of the 
fragment on Priam's slaughter. 

216 12. I am no longer ******. Lamb originally had here in 
place of the asterisks " J s D n," and signed the essay " J. D." 

216 17. cum dignitate : part of a popular phrase othim cum dignitate 
in Cicero's Pro Sestio, 1. 45. 

216 20. Opus operatum est : composed probably by the author for the 
sake of the pun. 

Review Questions. 1. Analyze the structure of the essay, noting {a) 
Lamb's mode of selecting and arranging his matter; (b) difference 
between this sketch and a short story ; (c) the emotional climax. 
2. Observe the numerous disguises and mystifications, 3. Which 



3/8 NOTES 

predominates, narrative or reflection ? 4. Note the prevailing tone and 
emotional level of the piece. 5. Is there any humor ? pathos ? satire ? 
philosophy? 6. Find and classify examples of hyperbole, personi- 
fication, metonomy, metaphor, simile, epigram, paradox, and other 
rhetorical devices. 7. Explain biblical allusions, " Lucretian pleasure," 
and "a poor Carthusian." 



XXX. SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS 

New Monthly Magazine, May, 1826 

This essay v^as originally published as a sequel to the Popular 
Fallacies. It was suggested to Lamb by ^a famous saying of Dryden's 
that great wit is nearly allied to madness. He here sets himself to the 
task of disproving and controverting this statement, using Shakespeare 
as a conspicuous example. This essay is more in the argumentative 
style than the other essays of Elia. "No detached sentences can," 
says Ainger, " convey an idea of this splendid argument. Nothing that 
Lamb has written proves more decisively how large a part the higher 
imagination plays in true criticism." 

217 1-6. ** So strong a wit did Nature to him frame," etc. : from 
Cowley's lines On the Death of Mr. William Hervey. 

217 19. to be mad with Lear : the octogenarian hero of Shakespeare's 
tragedy Kitig Lear (1605), who, being refused hospitality by his 
ungrateful daughters Regan and Goneril, spends a night raving in the 
storm. See III, ii, iii, iv, and vi. 

217 20. Timon : the type of the misanthrope, or man hater, in 
Shakespeare's tragedy Timon of Athens (1608). 

217 24. Kent, the Earl of, who disguised as Caius faithfully attends 
upon Lear in his misfortunes. 

217 25. Flavius : the faithful, honest steward of Timon. 

217 32. Proteus. See Gayley's Classic Myths., p. 86. 

218 2. Caliban : the " freckled whelp " of the witch Sycorax, a savage 
monster, slave of Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest (1610). 
Coleridge speaks of him as having " the dawnings of understanding 
without reason or the moral sense." 

218 23. Lane's novels. Lane was a London publisher, who issued 
numerous light works of fiction generally known as the novels of the 
Minerva Press. 

219 14. the cave of Mammon. See Spenser's Faerie Qtteene, Legend 
of Sir Guyon, the Knight of Temperance, Book II, Canto vii. 



NOTES 379 

219 19. the Hesperian fruit : the golden apples which grew in the 
mythical " Hesperian fields," or orchards, in an island of the Atlantic. 

219 19. Tantalus. See Gayley's Classic Myths, p. 350. 

219 19-20. Pilate washing his hands. See Matthew xxvii. 24. 

219 22. the Cyclops : a race of one-eyed giants, represented in the 
later mythology as assistants in Vulcan's forge, where they fabricated 
Jupiter's thunderbolts. 

Review Questions. 1. Draw up a brief showing the logical structure 
of Lamb's argument. 2. Judging by this essay, what peculiar gifts did 
Lamb possess as a critic .'' 3. Trace out the passage in the opening 
paragraph reminiscent of Milton's Paradise Lost, Books I-III. 4. What 
impression is given by the essay of the author's reasoning powers ? 

5. Examine carefully the illustrative passage from the Faerie Queene. 

6. Explain the meaning of the classical allusions : e.g. Proteus' " wild 
sea-brood," " Hesperian fruit," " the waters of Tantalus," and " the forge 
of the Cyclops." 



XXXL TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON 

The Englishman^ s Magazine, August, 183 1 

Talfourd speaks of this and the succeeding essay on Elliston as 
"among the most original, the least constrained, and the most richly 
coloured of his works" {Letters, p. 62). The subject of the rhapsody 
was Robert William Elliston (i 774-1 831), who achieved great celebrity 
in London as an actor and manager. " After a career showing great 
versatility and power, together with many excesses and absurdities, he 
died the first comedian of his day. Some of his best characters in 
comedy were Doricourt, Charles Surface, Rover, and Ranger, and in 
tragedy Hamlet, Romeo, and Hotspur " {Century Cyclopedia of Names). 

220 10. Avernus : a designation, by the Latin poets, of the lower 
world, the entrance to which, according to Virgil, was a cave on the 
shore of Lake Avernus in Campania. 

220 11. Rover : a character in Mrs. Aphra Behn's comedy The Rover 
(1680). He is a dissolute young spark who sets off vice as "naughty 
but yet nice." 

220 12. Elysian streams. According to Homer, Elysium w^as the 
blissful abode of the virtuous dead, on the border of the ocean stream. 

220 20. Pleasure House. Cf. such allegorical houses of pleasure as 
Spenser's House of Pride and Thomson's Castle of Indolence. 



380 NOTES 

220 20-21. thy Palace of Dainty Devices : a phrase probably suggested 
by Richard Edward's The Paradise of Dainty Devices (1576), a collec- 
tion of miscellaneous poems. 

220 21. Louvre: a museum of fine arts in Paris, containing one 
of the most priceless collections of sculpture and paintings in the 
world. 

220 21. White Hall: a London palace famous for its associations 
wnth the Stuarts and for its banqueting hall, which contains a number 
of celebrated paintings by Rubens. 

220 24. Tartarus. See note on p. 330. 

220 24. the Blessed Shades. See note on " Elysian streams," p. 379. 

220 27. a receptacle apart for Patriarchs, etc. According to the scho- 
lastic theologians of the Middle Ages the abode of shades awaiting the 
Resurrection was divided into four compartments, reserved respec- 
tively for unbaptized children, the Fathers of the Church, average 
good people being cleansed and prepared for Heaven (Purgatory), and 
lunatics [limbiis fatuorum, or Paradise of Fools). 

221 1-7. " Up thither like aerial vapours fly," etc. : a parody of 
the description of the Limbo of Vanity in Paradise Lost, Book III, 
348 seq. See Pope's Rape of the Lock, V, for a similar Limbo of the 
Moon. 

221 12. Green Rooms : the retiring rooms, near the stage, for actors 
and actresses. 

221 14. Figurantes : girls dancing in groups, or figures ; here ballet 

girls. 

221 20-21. in crazy Stygian wherry. Charon, "the old boatman," 
rowed the shades across the river Styx, which flowed nine times around 
the infernal regions. According to some the river was the Acheron. 

221 30. candle-snuffer : the menial whose business it was to apply an 
" extinguisher " to the candles, which were generally used for lighting 
in Lamb's day. 

222 4. a la Foppington. See note on p. 357. 

222 7. the old Thracian Harper: Orpheus, who visited the infernal 
regions in quest of his wife Eurydice. 

22218. Rhadamanthus : one of the judges in Pluto's realms. 

222 23-24. upon the boards of Drury : Drury Lane Theater, one of 
the principal playhouses of London, situated on Russell Street, near 
Drury Lane. It was first opened in 1663. 

222 27-28. those Medusean ringlets : Medusa had serpents in place 
of hair. Lamb had in mind Rehoboam's threat, " I will chastise you 
with scorpions" (i Kings xii. 14). 



,tamL\ 



NOTES 381 

222 39. Plaudito, et Valeto : applaud and farewell. The Roman 
plays ended with a request of the audience to applaud. 

222 35. IVIr. H. : Lamb's farce which met with failure amid hisses at 
Drury Lane. 

Review Questions. 1. Find examples of the use of the pun and 
other witty allusions. 2. Why is Orpheus' trip to Hades described 
as a " tiresome monodrame " ? 3. Note how Lamb has suggested Ellis- 
ton's personality by certain subtle touches. 4. Compare the tone of 
this essay with such works as Lang's Letters to Dead Authors and 
Jerome's House-boat on the Styx. 



XXXII. ELLISTONIANA 

Englishmatt's Magazine, August, 1831 

This and the preceding essay were prompted by the death of the 
actor in July, 1831. 

223 17-18. So Lovelace sold his gloves in King Street. Lovelace, a 
character in Murphy's Three Weeks after Marriage, is a young aris- 
tocrat, who tries to win by flattery the daughter of Drugget, a rich but 
vulgar tradesman. His finest work was the Aphrodite Anadyomene. 

224 19. Apelles : a great Athenian painter of the times of Philip and 
Alexander. 

224 19-20. So G. D. always poetises : George Dyer. See note on 

P- 325- 

22434-225 1. Did he play Ranger? Ranger is the madcap cousin 

of Clarind and the leading character in Dr. Hoadly's comedy The Sus- 
picious Husband (1747). 

225 20. Gibber, Colley (1671-1757) : an English actor and dramatist. 
Among his plays are Love's Last Shift, The Careless Husband, The 
Double Gallant, and The Provoked Husband. He was made poet 
laureate in 1730 and was satirized as Dulness in Voce's Dunciad. He 
published an Apology for My Life in 1740. 

226 2-3. St. Dunstan's Church . . . with its punctual giants. The 
old clock had two wooden giants to strike the hours. See Baedeker's 
London, p. 135. 

226 15-16. the consular exile : Marius. 
226 16-17. a more illustrious exile : Napoleon I. 

226 22. small Ol3mipic : a theater for light comedy and farces, situ- 
ated on the Strand and Wych Street. 



-? 



S2 NOTES 



227 1. Sir A C : Sir Anthony Carlisle, the surgeon. 

227 18-19. the confidence of a Vestris : Lucia Elizabetta Bartolozzi, 
by marriage Madame Vestris (1813) and Mrs. Matthews {1838) ; an 
actress at Drury Lane, 1820-1831, and later manager of the Olympic 
and Lyceum theaters. She possessed a fine contralto voice. 

227 31-32. the son of Peleus : Achilles. 

227 32. Lycaon : a son of Priam and Laothoe. He was slain by 
Achilles in the Trojan war. See Homer's Iliad, Book XXI. 

228 4. Surrey Theatre : on Blackfriar's Road. Melodramas and 
farces are usually given there. 

228 30-31. the munificent and pious Colet: John Colet (1466-1519), 
a London scholar and theologian, dean of St. Paul's and founder of St. 
Paul's School. 

228 31. the Pauline Muses: either certain local so-called "Muses" 
of St. Paul's School, or the young women who frequented Paul's Walk 
in the nave of old St, Paul's. 

Review Questions. 1. Whom does Lamb mean by "the consular 
exile," and whom by " a more illustrious exile " ? 2. Note the quiet tone 
of this essay as compared with the first on Elliston. Which is the 
more imaginative ? emotional ? original ? 3. What is the quality of 
the humor in the two essays ? 4. Show why the second is a master- 
piece of character analysis, — the first a satirical rhapsody. 



XXXIIL NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO 

Englishman's Magazine, October, 1831 

This essay has a peculiar autobiographic interest as it records, in the 
nature of confessions, the unfortunate experiences of Lamb as a para- 
grapher for several London journals. His newspaper contributions 
began a little prior to 1798 and ceased in 1803. During this most try- 
ing time of poverty and struggle with ill health he was connected wdth 
the Mor?ting Chronicle, the Morning Post, and the Albion. Lamb was 
unfitted by temperament for journalism, which rapidly undermined his 
health. Stuart said that he " could never make anything of his writings. 
Of politics he knew nothing ; and his drollery was vapid when given in 
short paragraphs for a newspaper" {^Gentleman' s Magazine, June, 1838). 

229 (title). Newspapers Thirty-Five Years Ago : i.e. 1796. This essay 
first received its present title in the volume of Last Essays of Elia 

(1833)- 



NOTES 383 

229 1. Dan Stuart : editor of the Morning Post. Lamb was intro- 
xluced to him by Coleridge, who repeatedly but unsuccessfully urged 
Stuart to settle Lamb on a salary. Dyer introduced him to Perry, 
editor of the Morning Chronicle. 

229 20. the Abyssinian Pilgrim: James Bruce (1730-1794), a Scotch 
traveler who explored Syria, the Nile valley, and Abyssinia (i 768-1 773). 
His Travels to Discover the Sources of the Nile appeared in 1790 in five 
volumes, and has been called the epic of African travel. 

229 23. Christ's Hospital. See note on p. 329. 

230 5. Tottenham : a suburb of London in Middlesex, six miles north 
of St. Paul's. 

230 13-14. the Gnat which preluded to the .ffineid. Culex or The 
Gnat is a supposed early work of Virgil's. It is the story of a goatherd, 
who, while asleep, was saved from a serpent's attack by the bite of a 
gnat. The insect was crushed inadvertently, but its shade appeared 
and reproached its slayer. The goatherd thereupon erected a tomb 
for the repose of his benefactor. 

230 14. the Duck which Samuel Johnson trod on. A fictitious story, 
refuted by Boswell, is told of Dr. Johnson to the effect that when three 
years old he chanced to tread upon a duckling, the eleventh of a brood, 
and killed it. He then dictated to his mother this epitaph : 

Here lies good master duck, 

Whom Samuel Johnson trod on ; 
If it had lived, it had been good luck, 

For then we 'd had an odd 07te. 

See Boswell's Life of Johnson, Vol. I, p. 15 (Malone ed.). 

230 28-29. the trite and obvious flower of Cytherea : the red rose which 
was sacred to Venus. 

230 29. the flaming costume of the lady, etc. See Revelation xvii. 1-4. 

231 4-5. Autolycus-like in the Play: from Winter'' s Tale, IV, iv, 201. 

231 8. Allusively to the flight of Astraea. Astrsea was the daughter 
of a Titan. When the Brazen Age began she was the last of the 
immortals to leave the earth and fled to the skies, where Jove made 
her the constellation Virgo. She is called the goddess of justice. 
Mrs. Aphra Behn was nicknamed Astrea by Pope and his contempo- 
raries. " How loosely doth Astrea tread the stage." 

232 9. go-to-beds with the lamb. See Lamb's Popular Fallacy entitled 
" That We Should Lie Down with the Lamb." 

232 13. Aquarius : the water bearer, one of the signs of the zodiac 
(January 20 to February 18). It is so called because it appears when 
the Nile begins its overflow. 



384 NOTES 

232 14. Bacchus : the god of wine. 

232 15. Basilian water-sponges. Basilan is an island in the Sulu 
Archipelago famous for its sponges. 

232 16. Mont Ague, or Volcan de Agua : a volcano in Guatemala 
which discharges water. 

232 16. Capulets : a noble family in Verona, in feudal enmity with 
the Montagues in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. 

232 29. "revocare gradus, superasque evadere ad auras," etc.: from 
Virgil's ^neid, VI, 128. 

233 4. Sabbatical exemptions. By a Jewish law all lands must lie 
fallow one year in seven. 

233 6. the mountain must go to Mahomet. For the origin of the 
proverb, see Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (" Mountain"). 

233 15-16. The craving dragon ... in Bel's temple. See The History 
of Bel and the Dragon, one of the apocryphal books of the Bible. 

233 21. Bob Allen, our quondam schoolfellow. This was at Christ's 
Hospital, where Allen was a Grecian. 

234 30. Boaden, James (i 762-1839) : an English dramatist, and biog- 
rapher of Kemble, Mrs. Siddons, Mrs. Jordan, and Mrs. Inchbald. His 
works include The Secret Tribunal, An Italian Monk, and Aurelio and 
Miranda. 

235 17. John Fenwick. See note on p. T^T^y 

236 10. Mr. Bayes. See note on p. 350. 

236 19. an unlucky, or rather lucky epigram. The verses are directed 
at Sir James Mackintosh, who had accepted the recordership of Bom- 
bay from Mr. Addington. The epigram is as follows : 

Though thou 'rt like Judas, an apostate black, 
In the resemblance one thing dost thou lack ; 
When he had gotten his ill-purchased pelf, 
He went away, and wisely hanged himself ; 
This thou may do at last, yet much I doubt 
If thou hast any bowels to gush out ! 

236 23-24. Citizen Stanhope: Charles Earl Stanhope (1753-1816), an 
English statesman and scientist, who sympathized with the French 
Revolution. 

236 30. Somerset House : a palace in the Strand used for government 
offices. 



NOTES 385 



XXXIV. ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 

CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR FITNESS FOR 
STAGE REPRESENTATION 

Talfourd records a controversy between Lamb and Thomas Barnes, 
the brilliant editor of the London Tifnes, respecting the comparative 
tragic power of Dante and Shakespeare. The scene occurred in 
t^amb's room long after midnight in the year 18 16. Some casual 
/eference to the article on King Lear brought forth an expression of 
enthusiastic admiration from the editor, " which was the more striking 
for its contrast with his usually sedate demeanor." " I think I see him 
now," writes Talfourd, " leaning forward upon the little table on which 
the candles were just expiring in their sockets, his fists clenched, his 
eyes flashing, and his face bathed in perspiration, exclaiming to Lamb, 
* And do I not know, my boy, that you have written about Shakespeare 
and Shakespeare's own Lear, finer than any one ever did in the world, 
and won't I let the world know it ? ' " 

237 4. Mr. Garrick, David (1717-1779) : the greatest actor of the 
eighteenth century. He was a member of Dr. Johnson's Club, and 
the favorite of all London. See note on p. 350. 

239 14. Mr. K. : John Kemble. See note on p. 346. 

239 15. Mrs. S. : Sarah Siddons (1755-1831), the most celebrated 
English tragic actress. She took a prominent part in the revival of 
Shakespeare, playing the parts of the tragic heroine with extraordinary 
success. Lady Macbeth was her greatest role. Sir Joshua Reynolds 
painted her as " The Tragic Muse." See Hazlitt's essay on Mrs. 
Siddons. 

241 13. Clarissa Harlowe : Richardson's most popular novel. See 
note on p. 367. 

241 17. Bajazet: sultan of Turkey, a fierce, indomitable character in 
Rowe's Tamerlane (1702). In Lamb's time the part was acted by John 
Kemble with great applause. 

241 21. Posthumus : the husband of Imogen in Shakespeare's 
Cymbeline. 

241 24-26. As beseem'd fair couple, etc. See Paradise Lost, VIII, 
100 seq. 

242 2. Betterton, Thomas (1635 ?-i7io) : son of a cook of Charles I, 
and a noted actor in the great plays of the Elizabethan dramatists. 
" Pepys at the beginning of his career, and Pope at the end spoke of 
him as the best actor they had ever seen." 



386 NOTES 

24317. Banks, John (1650-1696 ?) : a minor playwright, author of 
The Rival Kings, The Innocent Usurper, etc. 

243 17. Lillo, George (1693-1739) : author of The London Merchant, 
or George Barnwell, Fatal Curiosity, etc. 

247 17. Dame Quickly : Mistress Nell Quickly, hostess of the tavern 
in Eastcheap, frequented by Prince Hal and Falstaff. 

24717-18. "like one of those harlotry players": from i Henry IV, 
II, iv, 437. 

247 25. the Gamester: Beverley in Edward Moore's tragedy (1753). 
The Mrs. Beverley compared with Lady Macbeth is his wife. She was 
a favorite character with the actresses of the time. 

247 28. Belvidera: the wife of Jaffier, one of the conspirators in 
Otway's Venice Preserved (1682). " We have to check our tears," says 
Scott, " although well aware that the Belvidera with whose sorrows we 
sympathize is no other than our own inimitable Mrs. Siddons " {The 
Drama). Mrs. Porter, Mrs. Barry, Miss O'Neill, and Miss Faucit also 
acted the part in the old London theaters. 

247 28. Calista : a character in Rowe's The Fair Pehitettt (1703), 
acted by Mrs. Siddons and Miss Brunton. 

247 28. Isabella: a nun in Southern's The Fatal Marriage (1692). 
It was a part considered "scarcely inferior in pathos -to Belvidera" 
(Chambers). Hamilton painted Mrs. Siddons as Isabella. Campbell 
says that Mrs. Barry was unrivaled in that part. 

247 28. Euphrasia : a character in Murphy's Grecian Daughter (1772). 
She saves the life of her aged father, who is dying of starvation in a 
dungeon, by fostering him at her breast. 

249 5. Cibber. See note on p. 381. 

249 6. " With their darkness durst affront his light " : from Paradise 
Lost, VI, 150. 

25018. Glenalvon: the heir of Lord Randolph in Home's tragedy 
Douglas (1757). He is killed by Norval, the son of Lady Randolph. 

252 6. "they themselves are old " : from King Lear, II, iv, 185-188. 
The reproaches belong rather to III, ii, 15-24. 

252 12. Tate has put his hook, etc. : Nahum Tate (1652-17 15), a minor 
poet and playwriter, who was appointed poet laureate in 1692. He 
made with Cibber an adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear at the 
time of the theatrical revival of the Restoration. In this Gallicized 
perversion of the tragedy the Fool and France are left out, Edgar is 
made the lover of Cordelia from the outset, and the play ends happily. 
It was the only acting copy used by all the great actors — Betterton, 
Garrick, Kemble, and Kean — from 1680 till 1838, when Shakespeare's 



NOTES 387 

version was restored by Macready at Covent Garden. See Macready's 
Reminiscences. 

Canon Ainger speaks of this essay as a " noble vindication of Shake- 
speare's original," and says : " No one feels that he is either patronizing 
or judging Shakespeare. He takes Lear, as it were, out of the hands 
of literature, and regards him as a human being placed in the world 
where all men have to suffer and be tempted. We forget that he is a 
character in a play, or even in history. Lamb's criticism is a com- 
mentary on life, and no truer homage could be paid to the dramatist 
than that he should be allowed for the time to pass out of our thoughts " 
(Ainger's Life of Lattib^ pp. 177-178). 

255 4. Tom Brown (i 778-1820) : a Scotch physician, philosopher, and 
poet ;, author of An Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect, 
Paradise of Coquettes, The War-Fiend, Agnes, Emily, etc. 

255 6. Bully Dawson : a London sharper, bully, and debauchee of 
the seventeenth century, portrayed in The Spectator, No. 2. 

256 8. the Orrery Lecturer. " An Orrery " was an astronomical toy 
to show the relative movements of the planets, etc., invented by 
George Graham and so named by Steele as a compliment to the Earl 
of Orrery. 

25613-18. "Time would run back," etc.: from Milton's Hymn on 
the Nativity. 

256 20. the Enchanted Isle : the island of Prospero in The Tempest. 

257 26-27. Gertrude's first and second husband. See Hajnlet, III, iv, 54. 

258 9. Falstaff. See / Henry IV, 2 Heitry IV, and The Merry 
Wives of Windsor. 

258 9. Shallow. See .? Henry /F'and The Merry Wives of Windsor. 
258 10. Sir Hugh Evans. See The Merry Wives of Windsor. 

Review Questions. 1. What is Lamb's criticism of Garrick's epitaph 
in Westminster Abbey ? 2. What does the character of Hamlet lose 
when acted ? 3. Lamb's view of naturalness in acting. 4. For what 
immoral teaching does he censure George Barnwell ? 5. Give Lamb's 
explanation of Hamlet's harsh treatment of Ophelia. 6. What are 
Lamb's objections to Tate and Gibber's alterations in King Lear? 
7. What fault does he find in Mr. C.'s acting of Richard III ? 8. Why 
does he think that Lear cannot be adequately acted ? 9. What are 
Lamb's view^s in regard to the acting of supernatural characters ? 
10. Why is a romantic play like The Tempest unsuited for stage repre- 
sentation ? 11. What light does this essay throw on Lamb's critical 
and argumentative powers ? 



388 NOTES 

XXXV. NOTES ON THE ELIZABETHAN AND OTHER 

DRAMATISTS 

In the notes to his Specimens of the English Dramatic Poets, Lamb 
was in his most congenial field, and is seen at his best as a critic. 
" Where no disturbing forces interfered," says Canon Ainger, " he exer- 
cised a faculty almost unique in the history of criticism. When Southey 
heard of his Specimens, he wrote to Coleridge : ' If co-operative labour 
were as practicable as it is desirable, what a history of English litera- 
ture might he, you, and I set forth ! ' . . . As it is. Lamb's contribution to 
that end is of the rarest value. If it is too much to say that he singly 
revived the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it is because we see 
clearly that the revival was coming, and would have come even without 
his help. But he did more than recall attention to certain forgotten 
writers. He flashed a light from himself upon them, not only heighten- 
ing every charm and deepening every truth, but making even their 
eccentricities beautiful and lovable. And in doing this he has linked 
his name for ever with theirs." 

260 (heading). Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593): the most brilliant 
of the group of dramatists immediately preceding Shakespeare. The 
characteristics of his style are his swelling blank verse, his delight in 
beauty of color and sound, his riot of passion, and his craving for 
immensity. His most important plays are Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus, 
The Jew of Malta, and Edward II. See Mermaid ed. He also wrote a 
paraphrase of Musaeus's Hero and Leander, and a number of beautiful 
songs. 

260 19. Lust's Dominion. " This play was published as Marlowe's 
in 1657, but is probably the same play as The Spanish Moor^s Tragedy, 
now attributed to Dekker, Haughton, and Day, printed in 1600, but 
which was certainly founded on a much older one" (Fleay). 

26021. "Come live with me," etc.: a song first printed in the Pas- 
sionate Pilgrim in 1599. See Ward's English Poets, Vol. II. 

2613. King Cambyses' vein. Cambyses, King of Persia (1561 ?), a 
curious tragicomedy by Thomas Preston, has, in consequence of its 
being cited by Shakespeare, become proverbial for rant. 

261 6. Pistol : Falstaff's ensign in 2 Henry /Kand The Merry Wives 
of Windsor. He is a boastful, ignorant, unprincipled bully. Theophilus 
Cibber (1703-17 58) was the best actor of Pistol. 

261 12. Tamburlaine the Great : a tragedy in two parts, first acted in 
1587, based on the lives of Timur by Pedro Mexia and Petrus Peron- 
dinus, translated by Fortescue. See Bullen's Introduction to Marlowe^s 



NOTES 389 

Works, p. xxii. "The subject of Tamburlaine," says Dowden, "is a 
mere lust of dominion, . . . the love of power in its crudest shape " 
{^Transcripts and Studies, p. 44). 

261 22. Edward the Second : a tragedy based on the life, abdication, 
and murder of King Edward II (i 284-1 327). It was probably written 
about 1590, but was not published until 1598. See Ward's History of 
Dramatic Literature. 

26129. The Rich Jew of Malta: a tragedy written about 1588, pre- 
senting the popular idea of an avaricious, murderous Jew. In 181 8 it 
was revived by Kean at Drury Lane. See Morley's English Writers, 
Chap. X, p. 117. 

262 11. Doctor Faustus, The Tragical History of: a dramatic ver- 
sion (1588 ?) by Marlowe of a German book entitled The History of Dr. 
Faustus, the Notorious Magician and Master of the Black Art (1587). 
" He treated the legend as a poet, bringing out with all his power its 
central thought — man in the pride of knowledge turning from his God" 
(Morley's English Writers, Chap. IX, p. 254). 

263 1. Lovelace : the hero and villain of Clarissa Harlowe. See 
note on p. 367. 

263 (heading). Thomas Dekker (i57o?-i637?) : a London poet and 
dramatist, who collaborated with Middleton in The Honest Whore (1604) 
and The Roaring Girl (161 1), with Massinger in The Virgin Martyr 
(1622), with Ford and Rowley in The Witch of Edmonton (1621?), and 
with Webster, Rowley, Chettle, Day, and Haughton in numerous other 
plays. He wrote alone Satiro-Mastix, The Shoemaker'' s Holiday, or 
the Gentle Craft (1599), Old Fortunatus (1600), Westward Ho! (before 
1605), and many other plays which excel in good shop scenes and 
those laid in taverns and suburban pleasure houses. He also wrote 
numerous pamphlets ridiculing the sins and follies of London, e.g. The 
Seven Deadly Sins of London (1606), News from Hell (1606), and The 
Gulps Hornbook (1609). 

263 5. Old Fortunatus, The Pleasant History of: a dramatization of 
a popular European legend of a man who receives from the goddess 
Fortune a purse which can never be emptied, and who takes from the 
Sultan a magic hat which transports the wearer wherever he desires. 
See Mermaid ed. 

263 25. Satiro-Mastix: published in 1602 as a reply to Ben Jonson's 
Poetaster, an attack on Dekker and Marston. 

264 7. an Appian sacrifice : an allusion to the old Roman legend, 
found in Livy, of the slaying of Virginia by her father to save her from 
the lust of the decemvir Appius Claudius. The story is found in early 



390 NOTES 

Italian and French literature, in Chaucer, Gower, Painter's Palace of 
Pleasure, and is the subject of plays by Webster, John Dennis, and 
Knowles. 

264 22. Cervantes (i 547-1616): a celebrated Spanish poet and nov- 
elist, author of Don Quixote (1605 and 1615). " The hero, Don Quixote 
de la Mancha, a country gentleman, being imbued with tales of chivalry, 
sets forth with his squire Sancho Panza in search of knightly adventure 
with very amusing results." The author's purpose was " to render 
abhorred of men the false and absurd stories contained in books of 
chivalry." 

264 (heading). John Marston (1575 ?-i634) : a London divine, satirist, 
and playwright, author of What You Will (1601 ?), Antonio and Mellida 
(1602), The Malcontent (1604), The Dutch Courtezan (1605), and The 
Insatiate Countess (161 3), which is also attributed to W. Barksteed. 
Marston also wrote many poems, and several books of satires in con- 
nection with his quarrels with Jonson and Dekker. Eastward Ho! 
he collaborated with Jonson and Chapman in 1605. 

266 1. The Merry Devil of Edmonton : a comedy acted by the King's 
Men at the Globe Theater before October 22, 1607. It is attributed 
by Fleay on internal evidence to Drayton. Kirkman the bookseller 
ascribed it without reason to Shakespeare. It suggested to Thomas 
Brewer a prose tract entitled The Life afid Death of the Merry Devil of 
Edmojiton (1608). 

266 12. Michael Drayton (i 563-1 631) : author of " the enormous Poly- 
olbion^ a geographical poem on Great Britain, consisting of thirty 
" songs " filled with a mass of antiquarian knowledge and fanciful and 
elaborate descriptions with much superadded ornament. He is also 
the author of The Barons'' Wars, England^s Heroical Epistles, the fairy 
poem Nymphidia, The Battle of Agincourt, etc. See Saintsbury's 
Elizabethan Literature, pp. 139—144. 

266 (heading). Thomas Haywood : a seventeenth-century dramatist 
and miscellaneous writer of pageants, didactic poems, and translations 
from Sallust and other classic authors. Besides the plays mentioned 
in the text, he wrote The Four Prentices of London (1600?), Edward IV, 
If You Knew Not Me, You Knew Nobody (1606), The Golden Age (161 1), 
The Fair Maid of the West (acted in 161 7), etc. 

26619. The Fair Maid of the Exchange: printed in 1607. Saints- 
bury pronounces it " a lively picture of contemporary manners " though 
" full of improbability." 

267 11. A Woman Killed with Kindness : acted in March, 1603. It is 
generally considered Heywood's best play. The plot is not admirable. 



NOTES 391 

though it involves situations of deep pathos. " A deceived husband, 
coming to the knowledge of his shame, drives his rival to repentance, 
and his wife to repentance and death, by his charity" (Saintsbury). 

267 11-12. a sort of prose Shakespeare. " There is no doubt that 
some harm has been done to Thomas Heywood by the enthusiastic 
phrase in which Lamb described him as ' a prose Shakespeare.' ... 'A 
prose Shakespeare ' suggests to incautious readers something like Swift, 
like Taylor, like Carlyle, — something approaching in prose the suprem- 
acy of Shakespeare in verse. But obviously that is not what Lamb 
meant. . . . What Heywood has in common with Shakespeare, though 
his prosaic rather than poetic treatment brings it out in a much less 
brilliant way, is his sympathy with ordinary and domestic character, his 
aversion from the fantastic vices which many of his fellows were prone 
to attribute to their characters, his humanity, his kindness " (Saints- 
bury's Elizabethan Literature, pp. 279, 280). 

268 22. Castaly : an English f onn of Castalia, a fountain of Apollo 
and the Muses, which flows from Mount Parnassus in Greece. 

269 5. Amurath, or Murad. Between 1359 and 1640 there were four 
Sultans of Turkey by that name. On ascending the throne, each 
Sultan murdered all his brothers. See Henry V. 

269 27. " Roscian Strain." See note on " Master Betty," p. 367. 

269 27. Alleyn, Edward (i 566-1 626): one of the two greatest tragic 
actors of his time. In conjunction with Philip Henslowe he built the 
Fortune Theater in 1600 and acted there at the head of the Lord 
Admiral's company. He was the founder of Dulwich College. 

269 31. The Brazen Age: a tragedy written in 1613. 

270 1. Meleager : the son of QEneus, king of Calydon, a city in 
Greece. He slew a wild boar sent by Diana to lay waste the country, 
and the brothers of his mother Althea fell in battle by his hand. Out 
of revenge his mother caused his death by burning an extinguished 
brand, on the preservation of which his life depended. 

270 8-9. the dying wife of Shore in Rowe. Jane Shore is accused of 
witchcraft and is condemned to wander about in a sheet, with a taper 
in her hand, without food or shelter. 

271 (heading). Thomas Middleton (i 570-1627) : the author of numer- 
ous plays, masques, prose pamphlets, and miscellaneous verse. He 
did some work in serious romantic comedy, but excelled in realistic 
comedy. Among his best plays are : Michaelmas Term, A Trick to 
Catch the Old One, More Disse?nblers besides Women, Women beware 
Women, A Gaine at Chess, The Witch, and A Chaste Maid in Cheap- 
side. A Fair Quarrel, The Changeling, and The Spanish Gipsy w^ere 



392 NOTES 

collaborated with Rowley ; TAe Old Law with Massinger and Rowley ; 
The Roaring Girl with Dekker ; and many other plays with Munday, 
Drayton, Webster, Jonson, and Fletcher. For an admirable criticism 
of Middleton by Swinburne, see Mermaid ed. 

27126. A Fair Quarrel (1617). "But high above all the works yet 
mentioned," says Swinburne, " there stands and will stand conspicuous 
while noble emotion and noble verse have honour among English 
readers, the pathetic and heroic play so memorably appreciated by 
Charles Lamb, A Fair Quarrel. It would be the vainest and emptiest 
impertinence to offer a word in echo of his priceless and imperishable 
praise" {Thomas Middleton., Vol. I, p. xx). 

272 28. Captain Agar. The scenes of quarrel and reconciliation 
between him and the Colonel deservedly rank high for their " impetu- 
osity and vigour, combined with very rough swift verse, and for their 
easy ascension to impossible heights of magnanimity, audacity, or 
resignation " (Ellis). 

273 (heading). William Rowley : a seventeenth-century actor and 
playwright. Almost nothing is known of his life except that he was an 
actor in the Duke of York's company and wrote plays in collaboration 
with Middleton, Dekker, Ford, Massinger, and others. Only four plays 
by him alone are extant, — A New Wonder (1632), A Match at Midnight 
(1633), All 'j Lost by Lust (1633), and A Shoemaker a Gentleman (1638). 
*' He was a fitful and irregular artist, weak in plot construction, but 
showing flashes of sudden inspiration, and delighting in all the mani- 
festations of strong passion" (Ellis). 

273 25. the Wife of Bath : one of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims. 
See Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Of the high comedy of the 
scene between Livia and the widow, Swinburne says, " It is not indeed 
unworthy of the comparison with Chaucer's which it suggested to the 
all but impeccable judgment of Charles Lamb." 

275 (heading). Cyril Toumeur: a tragic poet who flourished about 
1600-1613. He was the author of an allegorical poem and an elegy 
on the death of Prince Henry, but his fame rests on the two tragedies 
mentioned by Lamb. He cultivated rugged satire and fierce tragedy. 

275 4. The Atheist's Tragedy ; or., The Hottest Man's Revenge. Fleay 
conjectures that it was acted between 1601 and 1604, ^^i^d printed in 
161 1. It was based on a story in Boccaccio's Decameron, VII, 6. It is 
pronounced by Saintsbury " an inextricable imbroglio of tragic and comic 
scenes and characters." 

275 11. The Revengers' Tragedy: licensed and printed in 1607. 
Saintsbury says that it shows a touch of genius both in conception and 



NOTES 393 

execution, but is marred by the improbability of the action and the 
inartistic prodigality of blood and horrors. 

275 (heading). John Webster: a seventeenth-century dramatist of 
whose life little is known, except that he was an industrious collaborator 
with Dekker, Drayton, Middleton, and others. He had " the incommu- 
nicable gift of the highest poetry in scattered phrases," and the power 
of producing "pity and terror by the exhibition of the unprevented but 
not unavenged sufferings of female virtue " (Saintsbury). His fame 
rests on four tragedies, — The Dtichess of Malfi (or Malfy), The White 
Devil, The DeviVs Law Case, and Appius and Virginia. 

275 23. The Duchess of Malfy: a tragedy first acted about 1612. 
The plot turns upon the secret marriage of the duchess with her 
steward, which leads to her insanity and death. See Gosse's Seven- 
teenth Century Studies, p. 55. 

276 15. The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona : a tragedy first acted 
about 1607 and printed in 161 2. It is Webster's masterpiece, and is 
highly praised for its wonderful flashes of poetry and its powerful por- 
traiture of the characters of Vittoria, Flamineo, and Brachiano. See 
Saintsbury's Elizabethan Literature, pp. 274-276, and Symonds's Intro- 
duction to Webster and Tourneur in the Mermaid ed. 

276 29. the funeral dirge in this play. See V, iv. 

276 30-277 1. the ditty which reminds Ferdinand, etc. See The 
Tempest, I, ii, 376 seq. 

277 13-14. Titus Andronicus : a noble Roman general against the 
Goths, the hero of a "drama of blood" produced in 1594 and vari- 
ously attributed to Marlowe, Kyd, and Shakespeare. 

277 (heading). John Ford (i 586-1639) : the author of several gloomy 
tragedies, every one of which presents "the burden of a passionate 
and heavy-laden heart, — all for love, and the world well lost." See 
Ellis's Introduction to Joh^t Ford, Mermaid ed. 

277 17-18. Contention of a Bird and a Musician. The passage is found 
in The Lover'' s Melancholy (printed 1629), I, i. Ford's reference is Fami 
Stradam, lib. ii, Prolus, 6, Acad. 2, Lmitat. Claudian. 

277 19-20. Crashaw, Richard (161 6-1 650) : an anti-Puritan poet of 
the school of Herrick, Carew, and Herbert. His religious and secular 
poems were published in three collections, — Steps to the Temple, The 
Delights of the Muses, and Carmen Deo Nostra. 

277 20. Ambrose Philips (1671-1749): a writer of considerable note, 
author of Pastorals (published in Tonson's Miscellanies, Vol. VI) and 
several plays, the best known being The Distrest Mother. Doran men- 
tions him among 'the wits at Button's coffeehouse, where he received 



394 NOTES 

the nickname of Namby Pamby on account of "his eminence in the 
infantile style." 

278 4. Calantha : the heroine of The Broken Heart (1633). The scene 
referred to is in V, ii, where in the midst of a grand court dance 
Calantha is successively informed of the deaths of her father Amyclas, 
king of Laconia, Penthea, her prospective sister-in-law, and Ithocles, 
her betrothed lover. Both Hazlitt and Saintsbury do not share 
Lamb's admiration for Calantha's death scene for three reasons : viz. 
that it is borrowed from Marston's Malcontent, is wholly unnatural, 
and that the crowning point is not Calantha's "sentimental inconsist- 
ency," but " the consistent and noble death of Orgilus," the betrothed 
lover of Penthea, who is condemned for murdering Ithocles. See 
Saintsbury's Elizabethan Literature, pp. 404-407. 

279 (heading). Fulke Greville, Lord Brook (1554-1628). See note on 

P- 335- 

279 22-23. "Much like thy riddle," etc.: from Milton's Samson 

Agonistes, 11. 1016, 1 01 7. 

280 (heading), Ben Jonson (1573 ?-i637) : "Rare Ben Jonson," the 
great poet, critic, and dramatist. He created the comedy of manners, 
which aimed to delineate realistically and satirically the humors, i.e. 
" the extravagant habits, passions, or affectations," of the lower classes. 
Among his best plays, in addition to those mentioned by Lamb, are Every 
Man in his Humour, The SileJit Woman, Bartholomew Fair, Volpone ; or. 
The Fox, The Poetaster, and the classical tragedies Sejanus and Catiline. 

280 10. Platonic affection : the pure spiritual friendship of man and 
woman advocated by Plato, in contradistinction to what is commonly 
called love. 

28011. Chrysophilites : the typical miser, from two Greek words 
meaning literally " gold lover." 

280 13. Creusa : the wife of ^Eneas, who was lost from her husband 
on the night when Troy was taken. See Virgil's ^neid, II, 562 seq. 

280 14. the Cave of Mammon. See note on p. 321. 

280 14-15. Barabas's contemplation of his wealth. See Marlowe's Jew 
of Malta, I, i. 

280 15-16. Luke's raptures. Luke is the hypocritical brother-in-law 
of Lady Frugal in Massinger's City Madam (1632). He is raised from 
indigence to enormous wealth by a bequest of his brother Sir John 
Frugal, a retired merchant. 

280 18. Guzman d'Alfarache : the hero of a Spanish romance, The 
Spanish Rogue {\^()g), by Mateo Aleman. From being a dupe, he becomes 
a swindler, student, merchant, etc. The story probably suggested to 



NOTES 395 

Le Sage his famous Life of Gil Bias. " Ruddocks," " pistolets," " Por- 
tuguese," and " pieces of eight " are names of old coins. 

280 31. The Poetaster ; or. His Arraigmnent {1602) : a satiric comedy 
by Ben Jonson, thought to be an attack on Dekker and Marston. 

2813-4. Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Tibullus: poets of the age of the 
Roman emperor Augustus (63 B.C.-14 a.d.), under whom Latin Htera- 
ture reached its highest point. 

28129. The huge Xerxean army: the host with which Xerxes (519- 
465 B.C.), king of Persia, invaded Greece. Lempriere says that, includ- 
ing the retinue of servants, eunuchs, and women that attended it, the 
army amounted to 5,283,220 souls. 

281 30. Achilles : the bravest of the Greeks at the siege of Troy. 

282 2. Sir Samson Legend : a character in Congreve's comedy, Love 
for Love (1695). 

282 (heading). George Chapman (i 559-1634) : a London poet and 
dramatist, chiefly celebrated for his translation of Homer. His prin- 
cipal plays are All Fools (1605), Bussy d'Ambois (1607), The Revenge 
of B ussy d^Ambois (161 3), and The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles^ 
Duke of Byron (1608). His tragedies are ponderous and didactic with 
something of the bombastic force and sweep of Marlowe, and his 
comedies are formless and deal with ignoble motives and passions. 

283 (heading). Francis Beaumont (i 584-1616) and John Fletcher 
(i 579-1625). These two eminent poets and dramatists were intimate 
friends, and lived together near the Globe Theater, sharing everything 
in common, and writing together from about 1606 to 161 6. The prin- 
cipal plays which they wrote jointly are The Woman Hater, The Maid's 
Tragedy, Philaster, A King and No King, The Knight of the Burning 
Pestle, Cupid's Revenge, and The Coxcomb. 

286 24. Troilus : a young Greek prince in Shakespeare's tragedy 
Troilus ajtd Cressida (about 1601). 
286 24. Timon. See note on p. 378. 

286 33. the Battle of the Books (1697): a satirical work by Dean 
Swift in which the ancient books fight against the modem books in St. 
James's Library. It was Swift's contribution to the famous Bentley- 
Boyle controversy regarding the merits of the ancient and the modern 
writers. The Blackmore mentioned as exchanging gifts with the Roman 
poet Lucan (39-65 a.d.), author of the epic poem Pharsalia, was Sir 
Richard (1650 ?-i729), physician to William III, and author of mis- 
cellaneous poetical and prose works. 

287 21. Juno Lucina : the Roman goddess who presided over the 
birth of children. 



396 NOTES 

287 22. Pope has been praised, etc. : a reference to the description 
of the game of ombre in The Rape of the Lock, Canto ii. 

287 (heading). Philip Massinger (i 583-1640). He was the sole author 
of fourteen plays, and wrote twenty-four others with Field, Dabome, 
Dekker, Tourneur, and Fletcher. The most important of his plays 
are The Duke of Milan (1623), A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1632), 
The Maid of Honour (1632), The Roman Actor, and The City Madam. 
" Massinger has a fertile and varied imagination, a command of dig- 
nified and harmonious blank verse, but is fond of sudden turns and 
twists of situation" (Saintsbury). 

289 (heading). James Shirley (i 596-1666): the last of the Elizabethan 
dramatists, author of at least thirty-nine plays of a haK-humorous, half- 
romantic type. The Lady of Pleasure (1637) is considered his best 
comedy, while The Traitor (1635) is the most powerful and pathetic of 
his tragedies. 

28912-13. The Provoked Husband (1726): a comedy begun by Sir 
John Vanbrugh (1666-17 26) under the name of A Journey to London, 
and finished by Colley Gibber. 

Review Questions. 1. In the notes on Marlowe, what is meant by 
" Cambyses' vein"? 2. What is Lamb's estimate of Edward II ? 
3. What is his analysis of the character of Barabas ? 4. What is 
his estimate of Doctor Faustus ? 5. Study the criticism of Orleans. 
6. What points of resemblance are found between Andrugio and 
King Lear? 7. Compare Lamb's theory about clothes with Carlyle's 
in Sartor Resartus. 8. What especially pleased Lamb in The Merry 
Devil of Edmonton ? 9. Explain the statement that " Heywood is a 
sort of prose Shakespeare." 10. What is Lamb's estimate of Heywood 
as a man? 11. Compare the witches in Macbeth with the witch in 
Middleton's play. 12. What is Lamb's appreciation of The Revengers^ 
Tragedy? 13. What is his estimate of Webster's tragic power ? 14. What 
did Lamb find admirable in Calantha's character ? 15. What is said 
of Jonson's classical scholarship ? 16. Discuss the type of character 
represented by Epicure Mammon. 17. What is Lamb's estimate of 
the genius of Chapman ? 



NOTES 397 



XXXVI. ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF 

HOGARTH 

Leigh Hunt's Reflector , i8ii 

289 (title). Hogarth, William (1697-1764): a celebrated English 
painter and engraver. In 1733 he published the "Harlot's Progress," 
and soon afterwards the "Rake's Progress." A set of these prints, 
Ainger tells us, was among " the treasures of the old house at Blakes- 
ware, and Lamb as a child had spelled through their grim and ghastly 
histories again and again, till he came to know every figure and incident 
in them by heart." Among Hogarth's other pictures are " Marriage a la 
Mode," " The Distressed Poet," " The Enraged Musician," " Industry 
and Idleness." An admirable essay on the " Marriage a la Mode " by 
William Hazlitt, a friend of Lamb and a far greater art critic, closes with 
these words : " Of the pictures in the ' Rake's Progress ' we shall not 
here say anything, because we think them, on the whole, inferior to 
the prints, and because they have already been criticised by a writer, 
to whom we could add nothing, in a paper which ought to be read by 
every lover of Hogarth and of English genius." 

290 20. Timon of Athens. See note on p. 378. 

291 2. Lear's beginning madness. See King Lear, III, iv. 

293 2. Ferdinand Count Fathom: a novel by Smollett (1753). The 
hero is a villain who robs his benefactors and dies in misery and 
despair. 

293 10-11. Sir Joshua Reynolds (i 723-1 792) : a distinguished English 
portrait painter. He was intimately associated with Dr. Johnson, 
Burke, Goldsmith, and Garrick, and it was at his suggestion that " The 
Club " was founded. He was the first president of the Royal Academy, 
and his Discourses were lectures delivered before that body. He was 
the author of three essays in The Idler and was painter to the king. 

293 22. Poussin, Nicolas (i 594-1 665) : a noted French historical and 
landscape painter. His pictures are found in all the art galleries of 
Europe, among the principal being " The Deluge," " Plague of the 
Philistines," " Rape of the Sabines," " Moses," " Triumph of Truth," 
and " The Plague at Athens." 

293 26-27. the scenes of their own St. Giles's. St. Giles is a locality 
in London, ijortheast of Westminster, and has been long noted as a 
center of vice and poverty. 

29410. Michael Angelo (1475-1564): a famous Italian sculptor, 
painter, architect, and poet. Lamb doubtless had in mind the frescoes 



39S NOTES 

in the Sistine Chapel in Rome, which depict the terrors of the 
Last Judgment. 

296 1. Ugolino : the count of Gheradesca, leader of the Guelphs in 
Pisa, who was stai-ved to death with his two sons and two grandsons in 
" The Tower of Famine " by the Archbishop Ruggieri. Dante in the 
Inferno represents Ugolino devouring the head of his enemy, who is 
frozen in the lake of ice. 

296 2. Beaufort, Cardinal and Chancellor Henry (d. 1447): president 
of the court which sentenced Joan of Arc to the stake. See the closing 
portion of De Quincey's essay on Joatt of Arc. 

296 10. Gorgonian looks. See note on p. 353. 

297 3. The Boys under Demoniacal Possession. In the famous paint- 
ing of the "Transfiguration" by Raphael (1483-1520) in the Vatican 
at Rome, Christ floats in glory attended by Moses and Elias above a 
group of apostles, while below the people bring a boy possessed of an 
evil spirit to the remaining apostles for relief. 

297 3. Raphael Sanzio : a celebrated Italian painter. Among his 
world-renowned works are the " Sistine Madonna " in Dresden, the 
" Transfiguration," " The Marriage of the Virgin " in Milan, " La Belle 
Jardiniere," " St. George and the Dragon," and " St. Michael " in the 
Louvre, and the " Vision of Ezekiel " in Florence. 

297 4. Dominichino Zampieri (1581-1641). See note on p. 342. 

298 24. Venice Preserved. See note on p. 357. 

298 28. Titian (1477-1576) : a celebrated Italian painter. Among 
his chief paintings are " Sacred and Profane Love " in Rome, " Bacchus 
and Ariadne " in London, " Ecce Homo " in Madrid, and " Christ 
Crowned with Thorns " in Paris. 

30126. Mr. Barry, James (1741-1806) : an Irish painter of historical 
and mythological subjects. On account of his violent temper he was 
expelled from his professorship in the Royal Academy. 

304 1-2. graces of an Antinous : the statue of the Emperor Hadrian's 
favorite page Antinous in the Capitoline Museum, Rome. It represents 
a beautiful nude youth with bowed head and melancholy look. An 
Apollo : the Apollo Belvedere, a famous statue in the Vatican, Rome. 
It represents a graceful youth undraped except for a chlamys which 
is clasped around his neck and thrown over his left arm, which is 
extended. 

304 4. Burke, Edmund (1729-1797) : the great statesrnan and orator, 
author of an essay on The Sublime and the Beatitiftil, Thoughts on the 
Causes of the Present Discontents^ Speech on Conciliation with America^ 
Reflections on the Revolution in France., etc. 



NOTES 399 

304 30. "West, Benjamin (1738-1820) : an eminent historical and por- 
trait painter, who was born in Pennsylvania, resided in London after 
1763, and succeeded Reynolds as president of the Royal Academy. 
His most noted paintings are " The Death of Wolfe," " Battle of La 
Hogue," " Death on the Pale Horse," " Alexander the Great and his 
Physicians," and " Penn's Treaty with the Indians." 

305 16. Juvenal (about 60-140 a. d.), a Roman satirical poet of the 
age of Trajan ; Persius (34-62 a.d.), a Roman satirical poet of the 
time of Nero. He has been ably edited by Professor Gildersleeve. 

307 28-30. Tom Jones . . . Blifil : characters in Fielding's novel 
Tom Jones. See note on p. 364. 

307 31-32. Strap . . . Random : characters in Smollett's novel Rod- 
erick Random. See note on p. 345. 

307 33. Parson Adams : a country clergyman in Fielding's novel 
Joseph Andrews (1742). His character is a mixture of simplicity, girlish 
modesty, unswerving integrity, benevolence, genuine piety, solid learn- 
ing, and boldness in the cause of truth. 

310 13. a Doddingtonian smoothness: George Bubb Dodington [cor- 
rect spelling], Baron Melcombe (1691-1762), a British politician, who 
acquired while in Parliament the reputation of an assiduous place 
hunter. He patronized men of letters, was complimented by Young, 
Fielding, and Bentley, ridiculed by Churchill and Pope, and introduced 
by Hogarth into the picture called the " Orders of Periwigs." 

311 12-13. Sir Hugh Evans : a pedantic Welsh parson and school- 
master of extraordinary simplicity and native shrewdness in Shake- 
speare's The Merry Wives of Wittdsor. Henderson says, " I have seen 
John Edwin (i 750-1 790) in Sir Hugh Evans, when preparing for the 
duel, keep the house in an ecstasy of merriment for many minutes 
together without speaking a word." 

311 17. Judith : the heroine of the opera mentioned, which is based 
on the Book of Judith in the Apocrypha. In order to deliver her native 
:ity, Bethulia, she gains admission, through her great beauty, to the 
ent of the besieging general, Holofernes, and beheads him in his 
('runken stupor. The story is also the subject of an old English poem 
dating from about the eighth century. See Morley's English Writers, 
\ ol. II, p. 180. 

311 20. "Music yet was young." Cf. Collins's Ode on the Passions 
(1746). 

311 26-27. Uncle Toby and Mr. Shandy : characters in Laurence 
Sterne's novel Tristram Shandy {() vols., 1760-1767). For the passage 
about the hobby-horse, see Book I, Chap. XXIV. 



400 NOTES 

311 29. Raphael. See note on p. 398. Correggio, Antonio Allegri da 
(1494— 1534), "a great Italian painter of the Lombard school, unexcelled 
in his mastery of the difficulties of foreshortening and the management 
of light and shade with a multitude of figures" (Perkins). His most 
noted paintings are " Night " and " The Reading Magdalen " in Dresden, 
" Antiope " and " Marriage of St. Catharine " in Paris, " The Ascension " 
and " St. Jerome " in Parma, and the " Ecce Homo " in London. 

Review Questions. 1. What parallel is drawn between the " Rake's 
Progress " and Timon of Athens ? 2. What is Lamb's defense of 
Hogarth against the charge of coarseness and vulgarity ? 3. Compare 
" Gin Lane " with " The Plague at Athens." 4. Why does Lamb prefer 
Hogarth's realistic to Reynolds's romantic pictures ? 5. How has 
Hogarth united the serious and the comic ? 6. What is said of the 
human countenance in Hogarth's drawings ? 7. What does Coleridge 
say of his female faces } 8. What does Lamb say of his portraits of 
children ? 9. Give Barry's criticism of Hogarth's drawings, and Lamb's 
reply. 10. Observe the tone of Lamb's comparison of Hogarth and 
Penny. 11. What does Lamb admire in the " Election Entertainment " ? 



XXXVIL ON THE POETICAL WORKS OF 
GEORGE WITHER 

" That Lamb was a poet," says Ainger, " is at the root of his great- 
ness as a critic ; and his own judgments of poetry show the same sanity 
to which he points in his poetical brethren. He is never so impulsive 
or discursive that he fails to show how unerring is his judgment on all 
points connected with the poet's art. There had been those before 
Lamb, for example, who had quoted and called attention to the poetry 
of George Wither ; but no one had thought of noticing that his metre 
was also that of Ambrose Philips, and that Pope and his friends had 
only proved their own defective ear by seeking to make it ridiculous." 

312 (title). George Wither (i 588-1667) : an English poet, author of 
The Shepherd's Hmtting, Fidelia, The Motto, Fair Virtue ; or, The Mis- 
tress of Philarete, and Abuses Stript and Whipt, a satire. He was edu- 
cated at Oxford, became a Royalist captain of horse in an expedition 
against the Covenanters, and during the Civil War was a major in the 
Parliamentary Army. 

31314. Shaftesbury (1621-1683), first Earl of, Anthony Ashley 
Cooper : satirized as Achitophel in Dryden's Absalo7n and Achitophel 
(1681). 



NOTES 401 

313 14. Villiers, George (1627-1688), second Duke of Buckingham: 
satirized as Zimri in the same poem. 

313 15. Wharton, Thomas (1640 ?-i7i5), Marquis of Wharton: the 
reputed author of the Irish poHtical song Lillibullero, satirizing James II. 
He was a member of ParUament and the Junto. 

314 7-8. "soaring in the high region of his fancies," etc.: from the 
Preface to the second book of Milton's Reason of Church Government 
Urged against Prelacy {16^2). 

314 31-32. "sweet uses of adversity," etc. See As You Like It, II, 
i, 12. 

315 4-5. the Marshalsea : a prison in Southwark, London, connected 
with the court of the same name, which was the seat of the marshal 
of the king's household. The prison was used latterly for debtors, 
and was abolished in 1849. After the Restoration Wither was 
imprisoned there, but was released in 1663. 

318 7. Ambrose Philips (1671-1749). See note on pp. 393, 394. 

Review Questions. 1. What is said of Wither's self-eulogy ? 2. Com- 
pare his satire with that of Dryden and Pope. 3. Note the aptness of 
the citation from Bunyan. 4. In what respects does Lamb compare 
Wither with Robert Burns ? 5. Find a beautifully balanced sentence 
in the fifth paragraph. 6. Examine this paragraph with respect to 
unity, mass, and coherence. 7. What is said in praise of Wither's 
meter? 8. What impression does this essay leave of Lamb's gift of 
interpretation ? 



INDEX 



Absolute, Captain, 358 
Abyssinian Pilgrim, the, 383 
Achilles, 382, 395 
Acres, Bob, 358 
Action, 2,1Z 
Adams, Parson, 399 

^gon, 373 

Agathocles, 370 

Ager, Captain, 392 

Agur, 327 

Alcibiades, 332 

Alice, 336, 356, 373 

Allan C, 320 

Allen, Bob, 384 

Alleyn, Edward, 391 

Alph, 353 

Althea's horn, 374 

Ambrose, 339 

Amicus Redivivus, 327 

Amiens, 324 

Amlet, Dick, 359, 370 

Amphitrites, 372 

Amurath, 391 

Anatomy of Melancholy, 334 

ancestors' money, 338 

Anderton's, 322 

Andrew and John, 325 

Andrewes, Bishop, 366 

Angelo, Michael, 351 

angle of incidence, 368 

anti-Caledonian, 345 

antic, 363 



Antinous, 398 

Apelles, 381 

Apollo, 398 

Appian sacrifice, 389 

Aquarius, 383 

Aquinas, i^t,, 377 

Arden, 369 

Argestes, 341 

Ariel, 371 

Arthur, 375 

Artist Evangelist, 370 

Arundel Castle, 360 

Ascanius, 360 

Ascapart, -^^t^ 

Astraea, 383 

Atheisfs Tragedy, The, 392 

Austin, 339 

auto dafe, 330 

Autolycus, 383 

Avemus, 379 

B , 346, V^ 

Bacchus, 384 

Backbite, Sir Benjamin, 358 

Bacon, Friar, 351 

Baddeley, 375 

Bajazet, 385 

Bank, the, 321 

Banks, John, 386 

Bannister, Jack, 358, 369 

banyan days, 328 

Barabas, 394 



4.02 



404 



INDEX 



Ba7'bara S- 



-»375 
Barbican, 323 

Barnes, 325 

Barrington, 350 

Barry, James, 398 

Barrymore, 356 

Bartlemy, 325 

Barton, 350 

Basilian water-sponges, 384 

Basket Prayer-book, 325 

Bath, 327 

Battle of the Books, The, 395 

Battle of Hexham, 369 

Bayes, 350, 384 

Beattie, 365 

Beau, the Old, 366 

Beaufort, 398 

Beaumont, 366, 369, 395 

Bedlam, 329 

bed-tester, 369 

Bellarmine, ■;>^^-T) , 

Bel's temple, 384 

Belvidera, 386 

Ben Legend, 359 

Bensley, 357 

Bermoothes, 372 

Betterton, Thomas, 385 

Betty, Master, 367 

B. F, 344 

Biblia a-biblia, 364 

Bigod, 333, 360 

Black Monday, 377 

Blakesnioor in H shire, 372 

Blakesware, 372 
Bland, Mrs., 369 
Blandy, Miss, 349 
Blessed Shades, 380 
Blifil, 399 

blot on your 'scutcheon, 370 
Blue-Coat School, 329 
Boaden, 384 



Bobadil, 374 

Bobby, 358 

Bodleian, the, 326 

Boldero, 376 

Boreas, 341 

Bowles, 337 

Boyer, James, 330 

Bramble, Sir Robert, 364 

Brazen Age, The, 391 

Bridget Elia, 320, 338 

Brighton, 371 

Brinsley, 332 

Broken Heart, The, 394 

Brown, Tom, 387 

Browne, ZZZ^ ZZ^, 337, 345 

Brunswick dynasty, 321 

Bubble, South-Sea, 321 

bugs, 372 

Bull, 324, 339 

Buncle, 334, 345 

Burgoyne, 323 

Burke, Edmund, 398 

Burney, 367 

Burns, 345 

Burton, 334, 344 

buskin, 358 

Buxton, 327 



C , 334, 354 

Caesars, 356 
Calantha, 394 
Caliban, 378 
Caligula's minion, 329 
Calista, 386 
Cam, The, 327 
Cambridge, 371 
Cambro-Briton, 322 
Cambyses' vein, 388 
Candide, 366 
Candlemas, 332 
Canticles, The, 336 



INDEX 



405 



cantle, 377 
capitulatory, 373 
Captain Jackson, 374 
Capulets, 384 
Carracci, the, 343 
Carthusian, The, 341, 377 
Cassiopeia's chair, 363 
Castaly, 391 
Cathay, 368 
Cave, 324 
Cayster, 340 
Celaeno, 354 
Cervantes, 390 
Cesias, 341 

Ch , 377 

Cham of Tartary, 342 
changehng, 336 
Chanticleer, 342 
Chapman, George, 395 
Character of the Late Elia, A, 

319 
Charles of Sweden, 342 

Chartreuse, the, 354 

Chatham, 323 

Chaucer, 326 

Cheap, 322 

Cheapside, 322, 372 

Children in the Wood, The, 355, 

369. 375 
Chimasra, 353, 371 

Chinese manuscript, 361 

Christie, 343 

Christ's, 326 

Christ's Hospital, 329, 383 

Chrisfs Hospital Five-and- Thirty 

Years Ago, 328 

Chronicle, The, 323 

Chrysophilites, 394 

Cibber, Colley, 381, 386 

Cinque Port, 372 

Clarissa Harlowe, t^6'], 385 



Clarkson, 343 

Claude, 343 

Clifford's Inn, 327 

Clinton, 323 

" Cloth," the, 361 

coatless, 373 

Cockletop, 362 

Coleridge, 320, 325, 362 

Colet, 382 

Colossus at Rhodes, 371 

Comberbatch, t,2>3 

Complete Angler, The, 334, 369 

Comus, 366 

Confessions, The, 363 

Confucius, 362 

Congreve, 395 

consular exile, 381 

Contention of a Bird, etc., 393 

corbeau, 369 

Corbet, 320 

" Cornwall, Barry," 353 

Correggio, 400 

Cotton, Mr., 337, 369 

couchant, 368 

Country Spectator, The, 330 

Coventry, 349 

Cowley, 366, T,']T^ 

Crashaw, Richard, 393 

Creusa, 394 

Croesus, 369 

Cunningham, 320 

C. V. L., 355 

Cyclops, 379 

Cymbeline, 361 

" Cynthia of the minute," 343 

Cyril, 339 
Cythera, 367, 383 

Dagon, 354 

Dainty Devices, Palace of, 380 

Dalston, 321 



4o6 



INDEX 



Damascus, 327 

Damoetas, 373 

Dan Phoebus, 336, 373 

Daniel, 335, 347 

Dante, 398 

Dawson, Bully, 387 

death's-head, 370 

Debates, the, 330 •" 

De Clifford, 373 

Dekker, Thomas, 389 

Delectable Mountains, 328 

deodands, 334 

De Quincey, 363 

Derwentwater, 323 

Desdemona, 347 

Detached Thoughts on Books and 

Reading, 364 
Dido, 339 
Dis, 341 
Dissertation upon Roast Pig, A, 

361 
diurnals, 366 

Do , 377 

Dobbin, Humphrey, 364 

Doctor Faustus, 389 

Dodd, 357, 375 

Doddington, 399 

Dodsley, 334 

Domenichino, 342, 398 

Dominic, 358 

Don Quixote, 390 

Domton, Old, 363 

Drayton, Michael, 366, 390 

Dream Children, 355 

Drummond, 366 

Drury Lane, 380 

Duchess of Malfy, The, 357, 393 

Duck, the, 2^%^^ 

Diike''s Servant, The, 358 

Dunning, 324 

Dyer, 325 



Eastbourne, 371 

Eastcheap, 371 

East India House, 320 

E. B., 339 

Edward II, 389 

Elgin marbles, the, 377 

Elia, 319, 342 

Eha, Bridget, 338, 342, 344 

Elia, James, 342 

Elisha bear, 349 

Elizabeth, 342 

Elizabethan Dramatists, Notes on, 

388 
Ellistoniana, 381 
Elwes, 349 
Elysian streams, 379 
Emanuel, 327 
Enchanted Isle, 387 
Enfield, 369 

Ephesian journeyman, 338 
' ' Esto perpetua / " 376 
Eton, 343 
Euphrasia, 386 
Evans, Sir Hugh, 387, 399 
Eve, 347 
Evelyn, 347 

F , 331 



Faerie Queene, 354, 366 

Fair Maid of the Exchange, 390 

Fair Quarrel, A, 392 

Fairfax, Lady, 357 

Falstaff, 332, 387 

Farley, 363 

Farquhar, 365 

Fathom, Count, 397 

Faustus, Doctor, 389 

Favell, 331 

"fearful joy, a," 367 

Fenwick, John, 2>ZZ^ 3^4 

Ferdinand, 393 



INDEX 



407 



Ferdinand, Count Fathom, 397 

Field, Mary, 324 

Field, Matthew, 325, 330 

Fielding, 364, 365, 399 

Figurantes, 380 

five points, the, 367 

Flaccus, 330 

flapper, 349 

Flavius, 378 

Fletcher, 366, 369, 395 

Flower Pot, the, 321 

Foppington, 357, 380 

Ford, John, 393 

Fr , 331 

Friar John, 336 

Fribble, 358 '^ 

Fuller, 346, 365 

Fuseli, 363 

Gamester, The, 386 
Garrick, David, 350, 385 
, q. D, 326, 381 
Gebir, 372 

Gentleman Commoner, 326 
George IV, 366 
Gertrude, 387 
Gibbon, 364 
Giordano, Lucca, 343 
Glenalvon, 386 
Glover, Richard, 374 
Gnat, The, 383 
Goldsmith, 365 
Gorgon, 353, 398 
Grace before Meat, 354 
Gray, 367 
Grecian, 331 
Green Rooms, 380 
Gresham, 377 
Greville, Fulke, 335, 394 
Grotiuses, 370 
Guardian, The, 365 



Guildhall giants, 333 
Guyon, Sir, 352 
Guzman, 394 



H- 



-.329 
Hallowmas, 343 

Hamlet, 323 

Harpies, 353 

Harrington, 327 

Harrogate, 327 

Hastings, 371 

Hathaway, 329 

hays, the, 368 

Helicon, -^y] 

Heliogabalus, 354 

Helots, 330 

Helvellyn, 353 

Henley, 371 

Herculaneum, 322, 326 

Hero, 340 

Herrick, 368 

Hertfordshire, 343 

Hesperian fruit, 379 

Hessey, 319, 320 

Heywood, Thomas, 345, 390, 391 

Hobbima, 343 

Hogarth, William, 322,360,363,397 

Holy Paul, 329 

Holy Thomas, '^t^t^ 

Hooker, 351, 370 

Hoole, 320 

Horace, 330, 395 

horologe, 348 

Hotspur, 357 

House Beautiful, the, 328 

Howard, Sir Robert, 376 

Howe, 323 

hoy, 371 

Hugh of Lincoln, 346 

Hume, 364 

Hydra, 353, ^(>t^ 



408 



INDEX 



Hymen, 339 
Hyperion, 357 
Hyson, 368 

Imperfect Sympathies, 345 

Ino Leucothea, 353 

Interpreter, the, 328 

Iris, 340 

" I saw a boy," etc., 367 

Isabella, 375, 386 

Isis, 327 

Jackson, 350 

Jael, 346 

Jamblichus, 331 

Janus, 320, 326 

Jenyns, Soame, 365 

Jerome, 339 

Jeshurun, 354 

Jew of Malta, The Rich, 389 

J 11, 349 

John, Friar, 336 

John L , 356 

Johnson, 354, 367 

Jonathan Wild, 364 

Jones, Tom, 399 

Jonson, Ben, 374, 394 

Jordan, Mrs., 356 

Josephus, Flavins, 365 

J s D n, 377 

Juan Fernandez, 372 

Jude, 328 

Judith, 399 

Jumps, Jemmy, 364 

Juno Lucina, 395 

Juvenal, 399 

K., spiteful, 334 
K., Mr., 385 
Kelly, Fanny, 375 
Kemble, 346, 357, 375 



Kempis, Thomas a, 342 
Kent, 378 
Keppel, 323 



-, 37^ 



Lady G , 366 

La Mancha, 357 
Lamb, Mary, 369 
Lambert, 357 
Lane's novels, 378 
Lardner, 367 
Latimer, 370 
Lavinian shores, ^3^ 
Leander, 340 
Lear, 378, 397 

Le G , 331 

Legend, Ben, 359 

Legend, Sir Sampson, 359, 395 

Leonardo da Vinci, 345, 369 

Lethean cup, 365 

Lillibullero, 401 

Lillo, 386 

Lincoln's Inn, 349 

Lions in the Tower, the, 328 

Liston, Tf)T„ 375 

Literary, The, 364 

Locke, John, 323, 330 

London Bridge, 362 

London Magazine, The, 319 

Louis the Fourteenth, 322 

Louvre, the, 380 

Love for Love, 395 

Lovel, 349 

Lovelace, 381, 389 

L.'s governor, 329 

Lucian, 355 

Lucretian pleasure, 377 

Luke's raptures, 394 

Lully, Raymund, 365 

Lusfs Dominion, 388 

Lycaon, 382 



INDEX 



409 



M., 327, 362 

M , ill-fated, 331 

M , pastoral, 324 

Macaronies, 322 

Macbeth, 360 

Machiavel, 338 

Mackery End, hi Hertfordshire, 344 

Macready, 375 

Magdalen, 326 

Mahomet, 384 ^^ 

Malfy, 357 

Malone, 366 

Malthus, 365 

Mammon, 321, 378, 394 

Man, Henry, 323 

Manciple, 326 

Mandarin, 368 

Manning, 362 

Maratti, 343 

Margate, 371 

Marlowe, Kit, 366, 388 

Marmaduke T , 331 

Marshalsiea, the, 401 

Marston, John, 390 

Marvell, 348 

Maseres, Baron, 351 

Massinger, Philip, 396 

matines and complines, 342 

May-Day Effusion, A, 359 

Medusean ringlets, 380 

Meleager, 391 

Merry Devil of Edmonton, The, 

390 
Meschek, 372 
Michael Angelo, 397, 398 
Midas, Lord, 323 
Middleton, Thomas, 391 
Mincing Lane, 376 
Minerva, 345 
Minerva Press, 378 
Mingay, 351 



Mint, the, 370 
Mirandula, 331 
Mont Ague, 384 
Morning Chronicle, The, 382 
Morning Post, The, 382 
Moses, 351 
Mount Tabor, 327 
Mowbray, 373 

Mr. H , 367, 381 

Mrs. BattWs Opinions on Whist^ 

Mulberry Gardens, 322 
Munden, 362 
Munden''s Farewell, 363 
Murray, 342 
My Relations, 342 

" Namby Pamby," 393, 394 
Nando's, 366 
Naps, 324 
Nay lor, 341 

Nells and Hoydens, 357 
Nessian venom, 370 
Newcastle, Duke of, 365 
Newcastle, Margaret, 334, 344 
Newspapers Thirty-Five Years 

Ago, 382 
New Yearns Eve, 335 
Nireus, 331 
" Noon," 322 
Norfolk, 355 
Notes on the Elizabethan and Other 

Dramatists, 388 

O'Keefe, John, 376 

Old Benchers of the Inner Temple^ 

The, 348, 349 
Old China, 368 
Old Fortunatus, 389 
Old Margate Hoy, The, 371 
Ollier's edition, 328 



4IO 



INDEX 



Olympic, the, 381 

Ombre, 3^7 

On Some of the Old Actors^ 

356 
On the Acting of Munden, 362 
On the Genius a7id Character of 

Hogarth, 397 
On the Poetical Works of George 

Wither, 400 
On the Tragedies of Shakespeare, 

opera Bonaventurce, t^t^-t^ 

Orellana, 371 

Oriel, 327 

Origen, 339 

Orphean lyre, 323 

Orpheus, 380 

Orsino, 357 

Ovid, 373, 395 

Oxford, 371 

Oxford in the Vacation, 325 



-, Susan, 349 



Paley, 365 
Pall Mall, 343 
Palmer, 358 
Pam, 338 
Pamela, 367 
Paracelsus, 365 
Paradise Lost, 339, 366 
Parker, 339 
Parnassus, 327 
Parsons, 358 
Parthians, 332 
Patriarchs, 380 ^ 
Paul Potter, 338 
Pauline Muses, 382 
Peleus, 382 
Penn, 347 
Persius, 399 
Peter Wilkins, 330 



Phaedrus, 330 

Philips, Ambrose, 393, 401 

Phillips, Thomas, 343 

Phoebus, 336, 373 

phoenix, the, 371 

Pierson, Peter, 350 

Pilate, 379 

Pilgrim'' s Progress, 328 

Pimpernel, 324 

Pistol, 388 

PI , 377 

Plato, 327 

Platonic affection, 394 

" Platonic, The Melting," 366 

Plaudito, et Valeto, 381 

Pleasure House, 379 

Plotinus, 331 

Plumer, 324, 338 

Poetaster, The, 395 

Poor Relations, 370 

Pope, 336, 396 

Population Essay, 365 

Porson, 326 

porter's knot, 367 

Posthumus, 385 

Poussin, 397 

Pr , 320 

Praise of Chimney-Sweepers, The, 

359 
Pratt, 323 

Primrose, Dr., 365 

Primrose Hill, 367 

Prior, 350 

Procter, 320 

Propontic, 333 

Prospero, 352 

Proteus, 378 

Provoked Husband, The, 396 

Psaltery, 356 

Ptiblic Ledgers, The, 323 /- 

Puck, 358 



INDEX 



411 



pyramids, the, 346 
Py ramus, 339 
Pythagoras, 330 

Quaker ways, 347 
Quakers' Meeting, A, 340 
Quickly, Dame, 386 

R , the great Jew, 369 

Rabelassian, 354 

Rambler, the, 354 

Random, Roderick, 399 

Ranger, 381 

Raphael, 343, 398, 400 

Read, 350 

Recollections of the South-Sea 

House, 321 
Reculvers, the, 371 
Relapse, The, 357, 364 
Religio Medici, 336, 344 
"Resurgam," 373 
Revengers'' Tragedy, The, 392 
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 397 
Rhadamanthus, 380 
Richardson, 367 
Richmond, 324 
Robertson, 364 
Robin Good-Fellow, 358 
Rochester, Earl of, 360 
Rockingham, 323 
R. N., 351 
Rory, 346 
Rosalind, 369 
Rosamond's Pond, 322 
Roscian Strain, 367, 391 
Rousseau, 330 
Rover, 379 
Rowe,.366, 391 
Rowley, William, 392 
Royal Calendar, 324 
" Royal Lover, etc.. The," 366 



S., Mrs., 385 

S , poor, 331 

Sabbatical exemptions, 384 
Salopian house, 360 
Salt, Samuel, 329, 349 
Samson Agonistes, 394 
Samuel, 352 
San Benito, 330 
Sanity of True Genius, 378 
Sans Prendre Vole, 338 
Satan, 370 
Satiro-Mastix, 389 
Sawb ridge, 324 
Scamander, 371 
Scapula, 327 
Scarborough, 327 
'scutcheon, 370 
Selden, 326, 351 
Servitor, 326 
"sessa," 363 
Seven Dials, the, 322 
Shacklewell, 321 
Shaftesbury, 364, 400 
Shallow, Master, 374, 387 
Shandy, Mr., ,399 
Shelburne, 323 
Shepherds, the, 328 
Shibboleth, 346 
Shining Ones, 341 
Shirley, James, 396 
Shore, Jane, 391 
Sidney, Sir Philip, 365 

Sir A C , 382 

Sir John, 358 

Sizar, 326 

Smith, Adam, 365 

Smollett, 345, 346, 365, 397, 399 

Snow Hill, 367 

sock, 358 

Somerset House, 384 

Sosia, 327 



412 



INDEX 



South ey, 354 

South-Sea House, The, 321 

Spa, 337 

Spadille, 337 

speciosa miracula, 369 

Spectator, The, 365 

Spenser, 378 

Staffordshire, 372 

Stanhope, Citizen, 384 

St. Anthony, 367 

St. Bartholomew, 360 

St. Bride's, 320 

S. T. C, 335 

St. Dunstan's Church, 381 

St. George, 353 

St. Giles, 397 

St. Omer's, 362 

Steele, 332, 365 

Steevens, 367 

Sterne, Laurence, 342, 365, 399 

Stonehenge, 346 

Strap, 399 

Street, Miss, 375 

Stuart, Dan, 383 

Stygian wherry, 380 

Suett, 358 

Superannuated Man, The, 376 

Surface, Joseph, 359 

Surrender of Calais, 369 

Surrey Theatre, 382 

Swift, 350, 395 

Tale of Lyddalcross, 320 

Tamburlaine the Great, 388 

Tame, 322 

Taming of the Shrew, The, 324 

T. and H., 320 

Tantalus, 379 

Tartarus, 330, 380 

Tate, Nahum, 386 

Tatler, The, 365 



Tattle, 357 
Taylor, 320, 365 

T e, Dr., 331 

Teazle, Sir Peter, 363 
Temple, the, 327, 348 
Terence, 330 
T. H., 353 

Th , 331 

Thisbe, 339 

Thomas, 333 

Thomson, 345, 371 

Thracian Harper, 380 

Tibbs, Ned, 374 

Tibullus, 395 

tide-waiter, 370 

Timon of Athens, 378, 395, 397 

Tipp, 323 
Tishbite, the, 328 
Titan, 322 
Titian, 398 

Titus Andronicus, 393 
Tobin, 329, 366 
Toby, Uncle, 399 
Tonson, 366 
Tooke, Home, 332 

To the Shade of Elliston, 379 

Tottenham, 383 

Toumeur, Cyril, 392 

" Transfiguration," the, 398 

Tristram Shandy, 342 

Troilus, 395 

Trophonius, 341 

Twelve Caesars, the, 356, 373 

Twickenham, 348, 372 

Twopeny, 350 

Two Races of Men, The, 332 

Ugolino, 398 
Universities, the, 371 
Urban, 351 
Urn Biirial, 333 



INDEX 



413 



Ursula, old dame, 361 
Usher, 326 
Utopia, 354 

Valentine, Bishop, 339 

Valentine' s Day, 339 

Vanbrugh, 357, 359, 364, 370 

Vandyke, 338 

Vaux, 322 

Venice Preserved, 357, 398 

Venus, 360, 367, 383 

Verrio, 329 

Vesta, 358 

Vestris, 382 

Vicar of Wakefield, The, 365 

Villiers, George, 401 

Vinci, Leonardo da, 369 

Viola, 369 

Virgil, 395 

Vittoria Corombona, 334, 393 

Vivares, 325 

Voltaire, 366 

W , Poor, 370 

Wainwright, 320 
Walton, Izaak, 321, 369 
Wapping sailor, 359 
" watchet weeds," 330 
Wealth of Nations, The, 365 
" Weathercock, Janus," 320 
Webster, John, 393 
Wednesday feelings, 377 
West, Benjamin, 367, 399 



Westminster Hall, 322 

Westward Ho ! 343 

W harry, 350 

Wharton, Thomas, 401 

White Devil, The, 393 

White Doe of Rylstone, The, 327 

White Hall, 380 

White, James, 360 

Whitgift, 339 

Whittington, 377 

Wife of Bath, the, 392 

Wilding, 359 

Wild, Jonathan, 364 

Wilkes, 323 

Witches and Other Night-Fears, 

352 
Wither, George, 400 
Woman Killed with Kindness, A, 

390 
Woollett, 325 

Woolman, 341 

Worthing, 371 

W n, Alice, 336 

W s, 373 

Xerxean army, 395 

"yeoman, the," 329 

Yorick, 342 

York, Duke of, 375 

Zimmermann, 335, 341 
Zimri, 401 



T ,17 R''7 



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